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“Then he’s all right--on such a day.” | Theign | --it made his lordship easier.<|quote|>“Then he’s all right--on such a day.”</|quote|>His companion could none the | to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier.<|quote|>“Then he’s all right--on such a day.”</|quote|>His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady | Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier.<|quote|>“Then he’s all right--on such a day.”</|quote|>His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. | Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier.<|quote|>“Then he’s all right--on such a day.”</|quote|>His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all | “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier.<|quote|>“Then he’s all right--on such a day.”</|quote|>His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have | father, how good you think him.” “‘Good,’ my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier.<|quote|>“Then he’s all right--on such a day.”</|quote|>His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he | she has learnt to ‘get round’ him till he only sees through her eyes--if you mean _that_ I understand you perfectly. But even if you think me horrid for reflecting so on my nearest and dearest, it’s not on the side on which he has most confidence in his elder daughter that his youngest is moved to have most confidence in _him_.” Lord John stared as if she had shaken some odd bright fluttering object in his face; but then recovering himself: “He hasn’t perhaps an absolutely boundless confidence--” “In any one in the world but himself?” --she had taken him straight up. “He hasn’t indeed, and that’s what we must come to; so that even if he likes you as much as you doubtless very justly feel, it won’t be because you are right about your being nice, but because _he_ is!” “You mean that if I were wrong about it he would still insist that he isn’t?” Lady Grace was indeed sure. “Absolutely--if he had begun so! He began so with Kitty--that is with allowing her everything.” Lord John appeared struck. “Yes--and he still allows her two thousand.” “I’m glad to hear it--she has never told me how much!” the girl undisguisedly smiled. “Then perhaps I oughtn’t!” --he glowed with the light of contrition. “Well, you can’t help it now,” his companion remarked with amusement. “You mean that he ought to allow _you_ as much?” Lord John inquired. “I’m sure you’re right, and that he will,” he continued quite as in good faith; “but I want you to understand that I don’t care in the least what it may be!” The subject of his suit took the longest look at him she had taken yet. “You’re very good to say so!” If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another question. “Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?” Lady Grace’s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the person by whom they were now joined. “Lord John desires you should tell me, father, how good you think him.” “‘Good,’ my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier.<|quote|>“Then he’s all right--on such a day.”</|quote|>His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain | by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier.<|quote|>“Then he’s all right--on such a day.”</|quote|>His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with | The Outcry |
His companion could none the less just wonder. | No speaker | all right--on such a day.”<|quote|>His companion could none the less just wonder.</|quote|>“Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” | his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.”<|quote|>His companion could none the less just wonder.</|quote|>“Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not | a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.”<|quote|>His companion could none the less just wonder.</|quote|>“Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit | master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.”<|quote|>His companion could none the less just wonder.</|quote|>“Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the | added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.”<|quote|>His companion could none the less just wonder.</|quote|>“Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken | my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.”<|quote|>His companion could none the less just wonder.</|quote|>“Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he | till he only sees through her eyes--if you mean _that_ I understand you perfectly. But even if you think me horrid for reflecting so on my nearest and dearest, it’s not on the side on which he has most confidence in his elder daughter that his youngest is moved to have most confidence in _him_.” Lord John stared as if she had shaken some odd bright fluttering object in his face; but then recovering himself: “He hasn’t perhaps an absolutely boundless confidence--” “In any one in the world but himself?” --she had taken him straight up. “He hasn’t indeed, and that’s what we must come to; so that even if he likes you as much as you doubtless very justly feel, it won’t be because you are right about your being nice, but because _he_ is!” “You mean that if I were wrong about it he would still insist that he isn’t?” Lady Grace was indeed sure. “Absolutely--if he had begun so! He began so with Kitty--that is with allowing her everything.” Lord John appeared struck. “Yes--and he still allows her two thousand.” “I’m glad to hear it--she has never told me how much!” the girl undisguisedly smiled. “Then perhaps I oughtn’t!” --he glowed with the light of contrition. “Well, you can’t help it now,” his companion remarked with amusement. “You mean that he ought to allow _you_ as much?” Lord John inquired. “I’m sure you’re right, and that he will,” he continued quite as in good faith; “but I want you to understand that I don’t care in the least what it may be!” The subject of his suit took the longest look at him she had taken yet. “You’re very good to say so!” If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another question. “Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?” Lady Grace’s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the person by whom they were now joined. “Lord John desires you should tell me, father, how good you think him.” “‘Good,’ my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.”<|quote|>His companion could none the less just wonder.</|quote|>“Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be | for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.”<|quote|>His companion could none the less just wonder.</|quote|>“Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of | The Outcry |
“Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” | Lord John | none the less just wonder.<|quote|>“Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?”</|quote|>“That he was coming? Not | a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder.<|quote|>“Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?”</|quote|>“That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord | was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder.<|quote|>“Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?”</|quote|>“That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there | appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder.<|quote|>“Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?”</|quote|>“That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” | not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder.<|quote|>“Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?”</|quote|>“That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t | trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder.<|quote|>“Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?”</|quote|>“That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, | mean _that_ I understand you perfectly. But even if you think me horrid for reflecting so on my nearest and dearest, it’s not on the side on which he has most confidence in his elder daughter that his youngest is moved to have most confidence in _him_.” Lord John stared as if she had shaken some odd bright fluttering object in his face; but then recovering himself: “He hasn’t perhaps an absolutely boundless confidence--” “In any one in the world but himself?” --she had taken him straight up. “He hasn’t indeed, and that’s what we must come to; so that even if he likes you as much as you doubtless very justly feel, it won’t be because you are right about your being nice, but because _he_ is!” “You mean that if I were wrong about it he would still insist that he isn’t?” Lady Grace was indeed sure. “Absolutely--if he had begun so! He began so with Kitty--that is with allowing her everything.” Lord John appeared struck. “Yes--and he still allows her two thousand.” “I’m glad to hear it--she has never told me how much!” the girl undisguisedly smiled. “Then perhaps I oughtn’t!” --he glowed with the light of contrition. “Well, you can’t help it now,” his companion remarked with amusement. “You mean that he ought to allow _you_ as much?” Lord John inquired. “I’m sure you’re right, and that he will,” he continued quite as in good faith; “but I want you to understand that I don’t care in the least what it may be!” The subject of his suit took the longest look at him she had taken yet. “You’re very good to say so!” If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another question. “Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?” Lady Grace’s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the person by whom they were now joined. “Lord John desires you should tell me, father, how good you think him.” “‘Good,’ my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder.<|quote|>“Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?”</|quote|>“That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord | a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another question. “Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?” Lady Grace’s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the person by whom they were now joined. “Lord John desires you should tell me, father, how good you think him.” “‘Good,’ my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder.<|quote|>“Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?”</|quote|>“That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to | The Outcry |
“That he was coming? Not that I remember.” | Theign | “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?”<|quote|>“That he was coming? Not that I remember.”</|quote|>But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, | none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?”<|quote|>“That he was coming? Not that I remember.”</|quote|>But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve | she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?”<|quote|>“That he was coming? Not that I remember.”</|quote|>But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face | “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?”<|quote|>“That he was coming? Not that I remember.”</|quote|>But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ | was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?”<|quote|>“That he was coming? Not that I remember.”</|quote|>But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of | one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?”<|quote|>“That he was coming? Not that I remember.”</|quote|>But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would | perfectly. But even if you think me horrid for reflecting so on my nearest and dearest, it’s not on the side on which he has most confidence in his elder daughter that his youngest is moved to have most confidence in _him_.” Lord John stared as if she had shaken some odd bright fluttering object in his face; but then recovering himself: “He hasn’t perhaps an absolutely boundless confidence--” “In any one in the world but himself?” --she had taken him straight up. “He hasn’t indeed, and that’s what we must come to; so that even if he likes you as much as you doubtless very justly feel, it won’t be because you are right about your being nice, but because _he_ is!” “You mean that if I were wrong about it he would still insist that he isn’t?” Lady Grace was indeed sure. “Absolutely--if he had begun so! He began so with Kitty--that is with allowing her everything.” Lord John appeared struck. “Yes--and he still allows her two thousand.” “I’m glad to hear it--she has never told me how much!” the girl undisguisedly smiled. “Then perhaps I oughtn’t!” --he glowed with the light of contrition. “Well, you can’t help it now,” his companion remarked with amusement. “You mean that he ought to allow _you_ as much?” Lord John inquired. “I’m sure you’re right, and that he will,” he continued quite as in good faith; “but I want you to understand that I don’t care in the least what it may be!” The subject of his suit took the longest look at him she had taken yet. “You’re very good to say so!” If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another question. “Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?” Lady Grace’s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the person by whom they were now joined. “Lord John desires you should tell me, father, how good you think him.” “‘Good,’ my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?”<|quote|>“That he was coming? Not that I remember.”</|quote|>But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the | “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?”<|quote|>“That he was coming? Not that I remember.”</|quote|>But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything | The Outcry |
But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. | No speaker | coming? Not that I remember.”<|quote|>But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this.</|quote|>“We’ve had other fish to | told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.”<|quote|>But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this.</|quote|>“We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the | then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.”<|quote|>But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this.</|quote|>“We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such | Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.”<|quote|>But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this.</|quote|>“We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of | instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.”<|quote|>But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this.</|quote|>“We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and | I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.”<|quote|>But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this.</|quote|>“We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his | for reflecting so on my nearest and dearest, it’s not on the side on which he has most confidence in his elder daughter that his youngest is moved to have most confidence in _him_.” Lord John stared as if she had shaken some odd bright fluttering object in his face; but then recovering himself: “He hasn’t perhaps an absolutely boundless confidence--” “In any one in the world but himself?” --she had taken him straight up. “He hasn’t indeed, and that’s what we must come to; so that even if he likes you as much as you doubtless very justly feel, it won’t be because you are right about your being nice, but because _he_ is!” “You mean that if I were wrong about it he would still insist that he isn’t?” Lady Grace was indeed sure. “Absolutely--if he had begun so! He began so with Kitty--that is with allowing her everything.” Lord John appeared struck. “Yes--and he still allows her two thousand.” “I’m glad to hear it--she has never told me how much!” the girl undisguisedly smiled. “Then perhaps I oughtn’t!” --he glowed with the light of contrition. “Well, you can’t help it now,” his companion remarked with amusement. “You mean that he ought to allow _you_ as much?” Lord John inquired. “I’m sure you’re right, and that he will,” he continued quite as in good faith; “but I want you to understand that I don’t care in the least what it may be!” The subject of his suit took the longest look at him she had taken yet. “You’re very good to say so!” If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another question. “Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?” Lady Grace’s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the person by whom they were now joined. “Lord John desires you should tell me, father, how good you think him.” “‘Good,’ my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.”<|quote|>But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this.</|quote|>“We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of | that he will,” he continued quite as in good faith; “but I want you to understand that I don’t care in the least what it may be!” The subject of his suit took the longest look at him she had taken yet. “You’re very good to say so!” If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another question. “Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?” Lady Grace’s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the person by whom they were now joined. “Lord John desires you should tell me, father, how good you think him.” “‘Good,’ my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.”<|quote|>But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this.</|quote|>“We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you | The Outcry |
“We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” | Theign | preoccupied, made nothing of this.<|quote|>“We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.”</|quote|>His friend had a vivid | remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this.<|quote|>“We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.”</|quote|>His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I | he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this.<|quote|>“We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.”</|quote|>His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as | matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this.<|quote|>“We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.”</|quote|>His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, | from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this.<|quote|>“We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.”</|quote|>His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without | shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this.<|quote|>“We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.”</|quote|>His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent | not on the side on which he has most confidence in his elder daughter that his youngest is moved to have most confidence in _him_.” Lord John stared as if she had shaken some odd bright fluttering object in his face; but then recovering himself: “He hasn’t perhaps an absolutely boundless confidence--” “In any one in the world but himself?” --she had taken him straight up. “He hasn’t indeed, and that’s what we must come to; so that even if he likes you as much as you doubtless very justly feel, it won’t be because you are right about your being nice, but because _he_ is!” “You mean that if I were wrong about it he would still insist that he isn’t?” Lady Grace was indeed sure. “Absolutely--if he had begun so! He began so with Kitty--that is with allowing her everything.” Lord John appeared struck. “Yes--and he still allows her two thousand.” “I’m glad to hear it--she has never told me how much!” the girl undisguisedly smiled. “Then perhaps I oughtn’t!” --he glowed with the light of contrition. “Well, you can’t help it now,” his companion remarked with amusement. “You mean that he ought to allow _you_ as much?” Lord John inquired. “I’m sure you’re right, and that he will,” he continued quite as in good faith; “but I want you to understand that I don’t care in the least what it may be!” The subject of his suit took the longest look at him she had taken yet. “You’re very good to say so!” If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another question. “Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?” Lady Grace’s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the person by whom they were now joined. “Lord John desires you should tell me, father, how good you think him.” “‘Good,’ my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this.<|quote|>“We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.”</|quote|>His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, | “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this.<|quote|>“We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.”</|quote|>His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must | The Outcry |
His friend had a vivid gesture. | No speaker | the freedom I allow her.”<|quote|>His friend had a vivid gesture.</|quote|>“My dear man, I only | to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.”<|quote|>His friend had a vivid gesture.</|quote|>“My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” | he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.”<|quote|>His friend had a vivid gesture.</|quote|>“My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all | Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.”<|quote|>His friend had a vivid gesture.</|quote|>“My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; | away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.”<|quote|>His friend had a vivid gesture.</|quote|>“My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to | deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.”<|quote|>His friend had a vivid gesture.</|quote|>“My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” | that his youngest is moved to have most confidence in _him_.” Lord John stared as if she had shaken some odd bright fluttering object in his face; but then recovering himself: “He hasn’t perhaps an absolutely boundless confidence--” “In any one in the world but himself?” --she had taken him straight up. “He hasn’t indeed, and that’s what we must come to; so that even if he likes you as much as you doubtless very justly feel, it won’t be because you are right about your being nice, but because _he_ is!” “You mean that if I were wrong about it he would still insist that he isn’t?” Lady Grace was indeed sure. “Absolutely--if he had begun so! He began so with Kitty--that is with allowing her everything.” Lord John appeared struck. “Yes--and he still allows her two thousand.” “I’m glad to hear it--she has never told me how much!” the girl undisguisedly smiled. “Then perhaps I oughtn’t!” --he glowed with the light of contrition. “Well, you can’t help it now,” his companion remarked with amusement. “You mean that he ought to allow _you_ as much?” Lord John inquired. “I’m sure you’re right, and that he will,” he continued quite as in good faith; “but I want you to understand that I don’t care in the least what it may be!” The subject of his suit took the longest look at him she had taken yet. “You’re very good to say so!” If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another question. “Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?” Lady Grace’s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the person by whom they were now joined. “Lord John desires you should tell me, father, how good you think him.” “‘Good,’ my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.”<|quote|>His friend had a vivid gesture.</|quote|>“My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of | Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.”<|quote|>His friend had a vivid gesture.</|quote|>“My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we | The Outcry |
“My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” | Lord John | friend had a vivid gesture.<|quote|>“My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!”</|quote|>With which there might well | freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture.<|quote|>“My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!”</|quote|>With which there might well have been in Lord John’s | His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture.<|quote|>“My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!”</|quote|>With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this | a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture.<|quote|>“My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!”</|quote|>With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” | “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture.<|quote|>“My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!”</|quote|>With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of | they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture.<|quote|>“My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!”</|quote|>With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the | have most confidence in _him_.” Lord John stared as if she had shaken some odd bright fluttering object in his face; but then recovering himself: “He hasn’t perhaps an absolutely boundless confidence--” “In any one in the world but himself?” --she had taken him straight up. “He hasn’t indeed, and that’s what we must come to; so that even if he likes you as much as you doubtless very justly feel, it won’t be because you are right about your being nice, but because _he_ is!” “You mean that if I were wrong about it he would still insist that he isn’t?” Lady Grace was indeed sure. “Absolutely--if he had begun so! He began so with Kitty--that is with allowing her everything.” Lord John appeared struck. “Yes--and he still allows her two thousand.” “I’m glad to hear it--she has never told me how much!” the girl undisguisedly smiled. “Then perhaps I oughtn’t!” --he glowed with the light of contrition. “Well, you can’t help it now,” his companion remarked with amusement. “You mean that he ought to allow _you_ as much?” Lord John inquired. “I’m sure you’re right, and that he will,” he continued quite as in good faith; “but I want you to understand that I don’t care in the least what it may be!” The subject of his suit took the longest look at him she had taken yet. “You’re very good to say so!” If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another question. “Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?” Lady Grace’s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the person by whom they were now joined. “Lord John desires you should tell me, father, how good you think him.” “‘Good,’ my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture.<|quote|>“My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!”</|quote|>With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark | of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture.<|quote|>“My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!”</|quote|>With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever | The Outcry |
With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. | No speaker | ask to profit by it!”<|quote|>With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness.</|quote|>“She has her friends by | “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!”<|quote|>With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness.</|quote|>“She has her friends by the score--at this time of | Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!”<|quote|>With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness.</|quote|>“She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll | with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!”<|quote|>With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness.</|quote|>“She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very | you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!”<|quote|>With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness.</|quote|>“She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of | some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!”<|quote|>With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness.</|quote|>“She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his | she had shaken some odd bright fluttering object in his face; but then recovering himself: “He hasn’t perhaps an absolutely boundless confidence--” “In any one in the world but himself?” --she had taken him straight up. “He hasn’t indeed, and that’s what we must come to; so that even if he likes you as much as you doubtless very justly feel, it won’t be because you are right about your being nice, but because _he_ is!” “You mean that if I were wrong about it he would still insist that he isn’t?” Lady Grace was indeed sure. “Absolutely--if he had begun so! He began so with Kitty--that is with allowing her everything.” Lord John appeared struck. “Yes--and he still allows her two thousand.” “I’m glad to hear it--she has never told me how much!” the girl undisguisedly smiled. “Then perhaps I oughtn’t!” --he glowed with the light of contrition. “Well, you can’t help it now,” his companion remarked with amusement. “You mean that he ought to allow _you_ as much?” Lord John inquired. “I’m sure you’re right, and that he will,” he continued quite as in good faith; “but I want you to understand that I don’t care in the least what it may be!” The subject of his suit took the longest look at him she had taken yet. “You’re very good to say so!” If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another question. “Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?” Lady Grace’s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the person by whom they were now joined. “Lord John desires you should tell me, father, how good you think him.” “‘Good,’ my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!”<|quote|>With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness.</|quote|>“She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she | from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!”<|quote|>With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness.</|quote|>“She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, | The Outcry |
“She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” | Lord John | far from all bourgeois narrowness.<|quote|>“She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.”</|quote|>There was clearly a claim | Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness.<|quote|>“She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.”</|quote|>There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time | man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness.<|quote|>“She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.”</|quote|>There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this | could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness.<|quote|>“She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.”</|quote|>There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t | Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness.<|quote|>“She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.”</|quote|>There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his | pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness.<|quote|>“She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.”</|quote|>There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, | we must come to; so that even if he likes you as much as you doubtless very justly feel, it won’t be because you are right about your being nice, but because _he_ is!” “You mean that if I were wrong about it he would still insist that he isn’t?” Lady Grace was indeed sure. “Absolutely--if he had begun so! He began so with Kitty--that is with allowing her everything.” Lord John appeared struck. “Yes--and he still allows her two thousand.” “I’m glad to hear it--she has never told me how much!” the girl undisguisedly smiled. “Then perhaps I oughtn’t!” --he glowed with the light of contrition. “Well, you can’t help it now,” his companion remarked with amusement. “You mean that he ought to allow _you_ as much?” Lord John inquired. “I’m sure you’re right, and that he will,” he continued quite as in good faith; “but I want you to understand that I don’t care in the least what it may be!” The subject of his suit took the longest look at him she had taken yet. “You’re very good to say so!” If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another question. “Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?” Lady Grace’s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the person by whom they were now joined. “Lord John desires you should tell me, father, how good you think him.” “‘Good,’ my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness.<|quote|>“She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.”</|quote|>There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger | other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness.<|quote|>“She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.”</|quote|>There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with | The Outcry |
There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. | No speaker | score--at this time of day.”<|quote|>There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day.</|quote|>“But in the matter of | has her friends by the score--at this time of day.”<|quote|>There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day.</|quote|>“But in the matter of friends where, by the way, | might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.”<|quote|>There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day.</|quote|>“But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t | “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.”<|quote|>There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day.</|quote|>“But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that | “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.”<|quote|>There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day.</|quote|>“But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that | as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.”<|quote|>There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day.</|quote|>“But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one | as much as you doubtless very justly feel, it won’t be because you are right about your being nice, but because _he_ is!” “You mean that if I were wrong about it he would still insist that he isn’t?” Lady Grace was indeed sure. “Absolutely--if he had begun so! He began so with Kitty--that is with allowing her everything.” Lord John appeared struck. “Yes--and he still allows her two thousand.” “I’m glad to hear it--she has never told me how much!” the girl undisguisedly smiled. “Then perhaps I oughtn’t!” --he glowed with the light of contrition. “Well, you can’t help it now,” his companion remarked with amusement. “You mean that he ought to allow _you_ as much?” Lord John inquired. “I’m sure you’re right, and that he will,” he continued quite as in good faith; “but I want you to understand that I don’t care in the least what it may be!” The subject of his suit took the longest look at him she had taken yet. “You’re very good to say so!” If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another question. “Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?” Lady Grace’s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the person by whom they were now joined. “Lord John desires you should tell me, father, how good you think him.” “‘Good,’ my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.”<|quote|>There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day.</|quote|>“But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put | time for another question. “Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?” Lady Grace’s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the person by whom they were now joined. “Lord John desires you should tell me, father, how good you think him.” “‘Good,’ my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.”<|quote|>There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day.</|quote|>“But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided | The Outcry |
“But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” | Theign | _know_ the time of day.<|quote|>“But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?”</|quote|>“Oh, off there among the | clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day.<|quote|>“But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?”</|quote|>“Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have | on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day.<|quote|>“But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?”</|quote|>“Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join | preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day.<|quote|>“But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?”</|quote|>“Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me | “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day.<|quote|>“But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?”</|quote|>“Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as | bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day.<|quote|>“But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?”</|quote|>“Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause | you are right about your being nice, but because _he_ is!” “You mean that if I were wrong about it he would still insist that he isn’t?” Lady Grace was indeed sure. “Absolutely--if he had begun so! He began so with Kitty--that is with allowing her everything.” Lord John appeared struck. “Yes--and he still allows her two thousand.” “I’m glad to hear it--she has never told me how much!” the girl undisguisedly smiled. “Then perhaps I oughtn’t!” --he glowed with the light of contrition. “Well, you can’t help it now,” his companion remarked with amusement. “You mean that he ought to allow _you_ as much?” Lord John inquired. “I’m sure you’re right, and that he will,” he continued quite as in good faith; “but I want you to understand that I don’t care in the least what it may be!” The subject of his suit took the longest look at him she had taken yet. “You’re very good to say so!” If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another question. “Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?” Lady Grace’s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the person by whom they were now joined. “Lord John desires you should tell me, father, how good you think him.” “‘Good,’ my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day.<|quote|>“But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?”</|quote|>“Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: | “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day.<|quote|>“But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?”</|quote|>“Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great | The Outcry |
“Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” | Lord John | whom I’ve but just heard?”<|quote|>“Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.”</|quote|>Accounting for this inquirer would | the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?”<|quote|>“Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.”</|quote|>Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of | sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?”<|quote|>“Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.”</|quote|>Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady | her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?”<|quote|>“Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.”</|quote|>Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of | Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?”<|quote|>“Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.”</|quote|>Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects | of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?”<|quote|>“Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.”</|quote|>Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit | about it he would still insist that he isn’t?” Lady Grace was indeed sure. “Absolutely--if he had begun so! He began so with Kitty--that is with allowing her everything.” Lord John appeared struck. “Yes--and he still allows her two thousand.” “I’m glad to hear it--she has never told me how much!” the girl undisguisedly smiled. “Then perhaps I oughtn’t!” --he glowed with the light of contrition. “Well, you can’t help it now,” his companion remarked with amusement. “You mean that he ought to allow _you_ as much?” Lord John inquired. “I’m sure you’re right, and that he will,” he continued quite as in good faith; “but I want you to understand that I don’t care in the least what it may be!” The subject of his suit took the longest look at him she had taken yet. “You’re very good to say so!” If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another question. “Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?” Lady Grace’s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the person by whom they were now joined. “Lord John desires you should tell me, father, how good you think him.” “‘Good,’ my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?”<|quote|>“Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.”</|quote|>Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, | his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?”<|quote|>“Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.”</|quote|>Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering | The Outcry |
Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. | No speaker | taken care of each other.”<|quote|>Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties.</|quote|>“I mustn’t appear to Bender | so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.”<|quote|>Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties.</|quote|>“I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but | time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.”<|quote|>Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties.</|quote|>“I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; | With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.”<|quote|>Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties.</|quote|>“I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you | with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.”<|quote|>Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties.</|quote|>“I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to | “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.”<|quote|>Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties.</|quote|>“I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and | begun so! He began so with Kitty--that is with allowing her everything.” Lord John appeared struck. “Yes--and he still allows her two thousand.” “I’m glad to hear it--she has never told me how much!” the girl undisguisedly smiled. “Then perhaps I oughtn’t!” --he glowed with the light of contrition. “Well, you can’t help it now,” his companion remarked with amusement. “You mean that he ought to allow _you_ as much?” Lord John inquired. “I’m sure you’re right, and that he will,” he continued quite as in good faith; “but I want you to understand that I don’t care in the least what it may be!” The subject of his suit took the longest look at him she had taken yet. “You’re very good to say so!” If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another question. “Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?” Lady Grace’s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the person by whom they were now joined. “Lord John desires you should tell me, father, how good you think him.” “‘Good,’ my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.”<|quote|>Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties.</|quote|>“I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as | smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.”<|quote|>Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties.</|quote|>“I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. | The Outcry |
“I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” | Lord John | least of Lord John’s difficulties.<|quote|>“I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,”</|quote|>he continued, “quite the pick | inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties.<|quote|>“I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,”</|quote|>he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that | of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties.<|quote|>“I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,”</|quote|>he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the | of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties.<|quote|>“I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,”</|quote|>he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, | Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties.<|quote|>“I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,”</|quote|>he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, | cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties.<|quote|>“I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,”</|quote|>he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of | John appeared struck. “Yes--and he still allows her two thousand.” “I’m glad to hear it--she has never told me how much!” the girl undisguisedly smiled. “Then perhaps I oughtn’t!” --he glowed with the light of contrition. “Well, you can’t help it now,” his companion remarked with amusement. “You mean that he ought to allow _you_ as much?” Lord John inquired. “I’m sure you’re right, and that he will,” he continued quite as in good faith; “but I want you to understand that I don’t care in the least what it may be!” The subject of his suit took the longest look at him she had taken yet. “You’re very good to say so!” If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another question. “Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?” Lady Grace’s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the person by whom they were now joined. “Lord John desires you should tell me, father, how good you think him.” “‘Good,’ my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties.<|quote|>“I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,”</|quote|>he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her | two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties.<|quote|>“I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,”</|quote|>he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at | The Outcry |
he continued, | No speaker | Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,”<|quote|>he continued,</|quote|>“quite the pick of a | very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,”<|quote|>he continued,</|quote|>“quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never | be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,”<|quote|>he continued,</|quote|>“quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word | clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,”<|quote|>he continued,</|quote|>“quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few | was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,”<|quote|>he continued,</|quote|>“quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation | and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,”<|quote|>he continued,</|quote|>“quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost | his companion remarked with amusement. “You mean that he ought to allow _you_ as much?” Lord John inquired. “I’m sure you’re right, and that he will,” he continued quite as in good faith; “but I want you to understand that I don’t care in the least what it may be!” The subject of his suit took the longest look at him she had taken yet. “You’re very good to say so!” If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another question. “Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?” Lady Grace’s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the person by whom they were now joined. “Lord John desires you should tell me, father, how good you think him.” “‘Good,’ my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,”<|quote|>he continued,</|quote|>“quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that | the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,”<|quote|>he continued,</|quote|>“quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small | The Outcry |
“quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” | Lord John | hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued,<|quote|>“quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.”</|quote|>“Without loss, you mean, of--a--my | spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued,<|quote|>“quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.”</|quote|>“Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly | the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued,<|quote|>“quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.”</|quote|>“Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat | claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued,<|quote|>“quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.”</|quote|>“Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost | Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued,<|quote|>“quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.”</|quote|>“Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted | yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued,<|quote|>“quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.”</|quote|>“Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short | remarked with amusement. “You mean that he ought to allow _you_ as much?” Lord John inquired. “I’m sure you’re right, and that he will,” he continued quite as in good faith; “but I want you to understand that I don’t care in the least what it may be!” The subject of his suit took the longest look at him she had taken yet. “You’re very good to say so!” If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another question. “Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?” Lady Grace’s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the person by whom they were now joined. “Lord John desires you should tell me, father, how good you think him.” “‘Good,’ my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued,<|quote|>“quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.”</|quote|>“Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. | did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued,<|quote|>“quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.”</|quote|>“Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and | The Outcry |
“Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” | Theign | clinching word to her yourself.”<|quote|>“Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?”</|quote|>Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably | time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.”<|quote|>“Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?”</|quote|>Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet | of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.”<|quote|>“Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?”</|quote|>Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently | Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.”<|quote|>“Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?”</|quote|>Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part | face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.”<|quote|>“Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?”</|quote|>Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that | elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.”<|quote|>“Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?”</|quote|>Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, | took the longest look at him she had taken yet. “You’re very good to say so!” If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another question. “Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?” Lady Grace’s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the person by whom they were now joined. “Lord John desires you should tell me, father, how good you think him.” “‘Good,’ my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.”<|quote|>“Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?”</|quote|>Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t | such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.”<|quote|>“Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?”</|quote|>Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself | The Outcry |
Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, | No speaker | you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?”<|quote|>Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you,</|quote|>“sink” a hundred other attributes--or | to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?”<|quote|>Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you,</|quote|>“sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and | to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?”<|quote|>Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you,</|quote|>“sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent | Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?”<|quote|>Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you,</|quote|>“sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever | pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?”<|quote|>Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you,</|quote|>“sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented | rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?”<|quote|>Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you,</|quote|>“sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that | had taken yet. “You’re very good to say so!” If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another question. “Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it from you again?” Lady Grace’s answer to this was to turn, as he drew nearer, to the person by whom they were now joined. “Lord John desires you should tell me, father, how good you think him.” “‘Good,’ my dear?--good for what?” said Lord Theign a trifle absurdly, but looking from one of them to the other. “I feel I must ask _him_ to tell you.” “Then I shall give him a chance--as I should particularly like you to go back and deal with those overwhelming children.” “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?”<|quote|>Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you,</|quote|>“sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your | together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?”<|quote|>Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you,</|quote|>“sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- | The Outcry |
“sink” | No speaker | ease he would, confound you,<|quote|>“sink”</|quote|>a hundred other attributes--or the | such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you,<|quote|>“sink”</|quote|>a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the | he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you,<|quote|>“sink”</|quote|>a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, | appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you,<|quote|>“sink”</|quote|>a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact | to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you,<|quote|>“sink”</|quote|>a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to | gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you,<|quote|>“sink”</|quote|>a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of | “Ah, they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you,<|quote|>“sink”</|quote|>a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling | appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you,<|quote|>“sink”</|quote|>a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was | The Outcry |
a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. | No speaker | he would, confound you, “sink”<|quote|>a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands.</|quote|>“Well, yes--_that_, of course, in | an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink”<|quote|>a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands.</|quote|>“Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has | was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink”<|quote|>a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands.</|quote|>“Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for | we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink”<|quote|>a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands.</|quote|>“Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine | expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink”<|quote|>a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands.</|quote|>“Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight | “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink”<|quote|>a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands.</|quote|>“Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left | they don’t overwhelm _you_, father!” --the girl put it with some point. “If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did,” he replied-- “from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundred painfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was only for the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held the large bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds his back. The bucket, under the stream--” “Was bound to overflow?” Lady Grace suggested. “Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been not unnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really,” Lord Theign insisted, “go and deal with it.” His daughter’s smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. “You work people up, father, and then leave others to let them down.” “The two things,” he promptly replied, “require different natures.” To which he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not of harshness, “Go!” It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as with a certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly and resignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared. “The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!” Lord John threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps just slightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the two were left together. VI Face to face with his visitor the master of Dedborough betrayed the impression his daughter appeared to have given him. “She didn’t want to go?” And then before Lord John could reply: “What the deuce is the matter with her?” Lord John took his time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink”<|quote|>a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands.</|quote|>“Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to | any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink”<|quote|>a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands.</|quote|>“Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I | The Outcry |
“Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” | Lord John | immediate question on his hands.<|quote|>“Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,”</|quote|>his companion has meanwhile replied | his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands.<|quote|>“Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,”</|quote|>his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was | indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands.<|quote|>“Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,”</|quote|>his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed | expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands.<|quote|>“Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,”</|quote|>his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, | his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands.<|quote|>“Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,”</|quote|>his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do | to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands.<|quote|>“Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,”</|quote|>his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we | time. “I think perhaps a little Mr. Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands.<|quote|>“Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,”</|quote|>his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor | perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands.<|quote|>“Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,”</|quote|>his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, | The Outcry |
his companion has meanwhile replied to it. | No speaker | of course, in all propriety,”<|quote|>his companion has meanwhile replied to it.</|quote|>“But I was thinking a | on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,”<|quote|>his companion has meanwhile replied to it.</|quote|>“But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the | that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,”<|quote|>his companion has meanwhile replied to it.</|quote|>“But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to | the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,”<|quote|>his companion has meanwhile replied to it.</|quote|>“But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my | hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,”<|quote|>his companion has meanwhile replied to it.</|quote|>“But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up | as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,”<|quote|>his companion has meanwhile replied to it.</|quote|>“But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my | Crimble.” “And who the deuce is a little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,”<|quote|>his companion has meanwhile replied to it.</|quote|>“But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of | simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,”<|quote|>his companion has meanwhile replied to it.</|quote|>“But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she | The Outcry |
“But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” | Lord John | has meanwhile replied to it.<|quote|>“But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.”</|quote|>Divinably Lord Theign put himself | in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it.<|quote|>“But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.”</|quote|>Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may | was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it.<|quote|>“But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.”</|quote|>Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who | ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it.<|quote|>“But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.”</|quote|>Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so | opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it.<|quote|>“But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.”</|quote|>Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it | ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it.<|quote|>“But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.”</|quote|>Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose | little Mr. Crimble?” “A young man who was just with her--and whom she appears to have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it.<|quote|>“But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.”</|quote|>Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that | to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it.<|quote|>“But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.”</|quote|>Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, | The Outcry |
Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to | No speaker | importance of our own time.”<|quote|>Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to</|quote|>“understand” in this particular connection--it | little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.”<|quote|>Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to</|quote|>“understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing | margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.”<|quote|>Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to</|quote|>“understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my | easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.”<|quote|>Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to</|quote|>“understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, | in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.”<|quote|>Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to</|quote|>“understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again | the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.”<|quote|>Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to</|quote|>“understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she | have invited.” “Where is he then?” Lord Theign demanded. “Off there among the pictures--which he seems partly to have come for.” “Oh!” --it made his lordship easier. “Then he’s all right--on such a day.” His companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.”<|quote|>Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to</|quote|>“understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so | I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.”<|quote|>Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to</|quote|>“understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most | The Outcry |
“understand” | No speaker | at all to strain to<|quote|>“understand”</|quote|>in this particular connection--it would | accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to<|quote|>“understand”</|quote|>in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend | “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to<|quote|>“understand”</|quote|>in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching | was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to<|quote|>“understand”</|quote|>in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she | or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to<|quote|>“understand”</|quote|>in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on | admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to<|quote|>“understand”</|quote|>in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t | companion could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to<|quote|>“understand”</|quote|>in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely | hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to<|quote|>“understand”</|quote|>in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am | The Outcry |
in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. | No speaker | all to strain to “understand”<|quote|>in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him.</|quote|>“‘Our own’ in the sense | He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand”<|quote|>in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him.</|quote|>“‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of | I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand”<|quote|>in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him.</|quote|>“‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing | almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand”<|quote|>in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him.</|quote|>“‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she | outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand”<|quote|>in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him.</|quote|>“‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he | simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand”<|quote|>in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him.</|quote|>“‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is | could none the less just wonder. “Hadn’t Lady Grace told you?” “That he was coming? Not that I remember.” But Lord Theign, perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand”<|quote|>in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him.</|quote|>“‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” | listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand”<|quote|>in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him.</|quote|>“‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our | The Outcry |
“‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” | Theign | of the work for him.<|quote|>“‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?”</|quote|>“Of yours and mine and | clearly, who must do most of the work for him.<|quote|>“‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?”</|quote|>“Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good | we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him.<|quote|>“‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?”</|quote|>“Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with | ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him.<|quote|>“‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?”</|quote|>“Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of | by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him.<|quote|>“‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?”</|quote|>“Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than | the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him.<|quote|>“‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?”</|quote|>“Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on | perceptibly preoccupied, made nothing of this. “We’ve had other fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him.<|quote|>“‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?”</|quote|>“Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only | had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him.<|quote|>“‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?”</|quote|>“Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; | The Outcry |
“Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” | Lord John | sense of yours and mine?”<|quote|>“Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.”</|quote|>This struck no prompt spark | him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?”<|quote|>“Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.”</|quote|>This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, | his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?”<|quote|>“Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.”</|quote|>This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you | question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?”<|quote|>“Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.”</|quote|>This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome | by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?”<|quote|>“Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.”</|quote|>This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, | attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?”<|quote|>“Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.”</|quote|>This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” | fish to fry, and you know the freedom I allow her.” His friend had a vivid gesture. “My dear man, I only ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?”<|quote|>“Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.”</|quote|>This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal | quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?”<|quote|>“Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.”</|quote|>This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this | The Outcry |
This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: | No speaker | my watching and waiting mother’s.”<|quote|>This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on:</|quote|>“The last thing she did | not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.”<|quote|>This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on:</|quote|>“The last thing she did this morning was to remind | connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.”<|quote|>This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on:</|quote|>“The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded | a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.”<|quote|>This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on:</|quote|>“The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you | his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.”<|quote|>This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on:</|quote|>“The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of | recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.”<|quote|>This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on:</|quote|>“The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value | ask to profit by it!” With which there might well have been in Lord John’s face a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.”<|quote|>This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on:</|quote|>“The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by | good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.”<|quote|>This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on:</|quote|>“The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady | The Outcry |
“The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” | Lord John | that Lord John went on:<|quote|>“The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me”</|quote|>--the younger man felt his | apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on:<|quote|>“The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me”</|quote|>--the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded | work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on:<|quote|>“The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me”</|quote|>--the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what | out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on:<|quote|>“The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me”</|quote|>--the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the | such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on:<|quote|>“The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me”</|quote|>--the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the | him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on:<|quote|>“The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me”</|quote|>--the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or | a light of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom. Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself far from all bourgeois narrowness. “She has her friends by the score--at this time of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on:<|quote|>“The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me”</|quote|>--the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least | merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on:<|quote|>“The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me”</|quote|>--the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider | The Outcry |
--the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- | No speaker | What she put to me”<|quote|>--the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further--</|quote|>“what she put to me, | she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me”<|quote|>--the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further--</|quote|>“what she put to me, with her rather grand way | apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me”<|quote|>--the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further--</|quote|>“what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, | friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me”<|quote|>--the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further--</|quote|>“what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” | great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me”<|quote|>--the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further--</|quote|>“what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s | and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me”<|quote|>--the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further--</|quote|>“what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating | of day.” There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me”<|quote|>--the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further--</|quote|>“what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a | age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me”<|quote|>--the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further--</|quote|>“what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has | The Outcry |
“what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” | Lord John | a little, but proceeded further--<|quote|>“what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.”</|quote|>Lord Theign at this point | younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further--<|quote|>“what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.”</|quote|>Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty | last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further--<|quote|>“what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.”</|quote|>Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took | for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further--<|quote|>“what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.”</|quote|>Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into | remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further--<|quote|>“what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.”</|quote|>Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s | in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further--<|quote|>“what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.”</|quote|>Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but | time of day. “But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your own--of whom I’ve but just heard?” “Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they’ll have met and taken care of each other.” Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the least of Lord John’s difficulties. “I mustn’t appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further--<|quote|>“what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.”</|quote|>Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on | you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further--<|quote|>“what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.”</|quote|>Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to | The Outcry |
Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. | No speaker | you know, as rather decent.”<|quote|>Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know.</|quote|>“Kitty has of course rubbed | it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.”<|quote|>Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know.</|quote|>“Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she | to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.”<|quote|>Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know.</|quote|>“Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, | did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.”<|quote|>Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know.</|quote|>“Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my | may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.”<|quote|>Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know.</|quote|>“Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine | if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.”<|quote|>Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know.</|quote|>“Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as | appear to Bender to have failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.”<|quote|>Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know.</|quote|>“Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign | must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.”<|quote|>Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know.</|quote|>“Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that | The Outcry |
“Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” | Theign | point resigned himself to know.<|quote|>“Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,”</|quote|>and he took himself up, | decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know.<|quote|>“Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,”</|quote|>and he took himself up, though it was scarce more | _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know.<|quote|>“Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,”</|quote|>and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course | fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know.<|quote|>“Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,”</|quote|>and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s | garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know.<|quote|>“Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,”</|quote|>and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed | in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know.<|quote|>“Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,”</|quote|>and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the | must at once let you know, before I join him, that, seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn’t been perhaps,” he continued, “quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know.<|quote|>“Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,”</|quote|>and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, | beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know.<|quote|>“Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,”</|quote|>and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the | The Outcry |
and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, | No speaker | is, I mean to say,”<|quote|>and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory,</|quote|>“discharges her obligations--by her sister’s | She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,”<|quote|>and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory,</|quote|>“discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention | as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,”<|quote|>and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory,</|quote|>“discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my | “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,”<|quote|>and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory,</|quote|>“discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his | for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,”<|quote|>and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory,</|quote|>“discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you | marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,”<|quote|>and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory,</|quote|>“discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. | chance; but that seemed never to come, and if I’m not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,”<|quote|>and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory,</|quote|>“discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially | covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,”<|quote|>and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory,</|quote|>“discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down | The Outcry |
“discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” | Theign | was scarce more than perfunctory,<|quote|>“discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.”</|quote|>Lord John, a little unexpectedly | took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory,<|quote|>“discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.”</|quote|>Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, | “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory,<|quote|>“discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.”</|quote|>Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all | _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory,<|quote|>“discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.”</|quote|>Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, | yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory,<|quote|>“discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.”</|quote|>Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on | a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory,<|quote|>“discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.”</|quote|>Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set | fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without abhorrence. Only I’ve led her to expect--for our case--that you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory,<|quote|>“discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.”</|quote|>Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to | last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory,<|quote|>“discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.”</|quote|>Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe | The Outcry |
Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. | No speaker | for which I naturally provide.”<|quote|>Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss.</|quote|>“Of course we take into | mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.”<|quote|>Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss.</|quote|>“Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only | everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.”<|quote|>Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss.</|quote|>“Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and | very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.”<|quote|>Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss.</|quote|>“Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal | waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.”<|quote|>Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss.</|quote|>“Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a | invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.”<|quote|>Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss.</|quote|>“Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high | you’ll be so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her yourself.” “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.”<|quote|>Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss.</|quote|>“Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required | mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.”<|quote|>Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss.</|quote|>“Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a | The Outcry |
“Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” | Lord John | but briefly at a loss.<|quote|>“Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----”</|quote|>“Over and above Kitty’s release | on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss.<|quote|>“Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----”</|quote|>“Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord | to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss.<|quote|>“Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----”</|quote|>“Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so | you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss.<|quote|>“Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----”</|quote|>“Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any | on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss.<|quote|>“Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----”</|quote|>“Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a | perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss.<|quote|>“Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----”</|quote|>“Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, | “Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter’s time?” Lord Theign, confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss.<|quote|>“Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----”</|quote|>“Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” | else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss.<|quote|>“Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----”</|quote|>“Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told | The Outcry |
“Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” | Theign | an understanding over and above----”<|quote|>“Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?”</|quote|>--Lord Theign reached out to | to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----”<|quote|>“Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?”</|quote|>--Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left | a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----”<|quote|>“Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?”</|quote|>--Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you | I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----”<|quote|>“Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?”</|quote|>--Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace | little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----”<|quote|>“Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?”</|quote|>--Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general | of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----”<|quote|>“Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?”</|quote|>--Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does | before, somewhat flushed and blown; but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----”<|quote|>“Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?”</|quote|>--Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt | and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----”<|quote|>“Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?”</|quote|>--Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly | The Outcry |
--Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. | No speaker | release from her damnable payment?”<|quote|>--Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air.</|quote|>“Of course we take _everything_ | above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?”<|quote|>--Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air.</|quote|>“Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my | we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?”<|quote|>--Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air.</|quote|>“Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even | though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?”<|quote|>--Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air.</|quote|>“Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John | with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?”<|quote|>--Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air.</|quote|>“Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why | his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?”<|quote|>--Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air.</|quote|>“Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you | dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed, of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?”<|quote|>--Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air.</|quote|>“Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” | Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?”<|quote|>--Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air.</|quote|>“Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I | The Outcry |
“Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” | Theign | left rather in the air.<|quote|>“Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--”</|quote|>Lord John was already all | to what his guest had left rather in the air.<|quote|>“Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--”</|quote|>Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your | be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air.<|quote|>“Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--”</|quote|>Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or | not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air.<|quote|>“Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--”</|quote|>Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty | see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air.<|quote|>“Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--”</|quote|>Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify | in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air.<|quote|>“Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--”</|quote|>Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just | least as cool as the occasion required. His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless, almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of relation with you, and would show you, with the last subtlety of displeasure, his impatience of your attempting anything more with himself. With such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air.<|quote|>“Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--”</|quote|>Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me | the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air.<|quote|>“Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--”</|quote|>Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” | The Outcry |
Lord John was already all there. | No speaker | twelve thousand; with the condition--”<|quote|>Lord John was already all there.</|quote|>“Definitely, yes, of your settling | you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--”<|quote|>Lord John was already all there.</|quote|>“Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” | entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--”<|quote|>Lord John was already all there.</|quote|>“Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the | the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--”<|quote|>Lord John was already all there.</|quote|>“Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see | fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--”<|quote|>Lord John was already all there.</|quote|>“Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: | Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--”<|quote|>Lord John was already all there.</|quote|>“Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, | such an ideal of decent ease he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--”<|quote|>Lord John was already all there.</|quote|>“Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the | up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--”<|quote|>Lord John was already all there.</|quote|>“Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks | The Outcry |
“Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” | Lord John | John was already all there.<|quote|>“Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.”</|quote|>“And what do you call | thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there.<|quote|>“Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.”</|quote|>“And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” | other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there.<|quote|>“Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.”</|quote|>“And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am | _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there.<|quote|>“Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.”</|quote|>“And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor | few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there.<|quote|>“Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.”</|quote|>“And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart | not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there.<|quote|>“Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.”</|quote|>“And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal | he would, confound you, “sink” a hundred other attributes--or the recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there.<|quote|>“Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.”</|quote|>“And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And | put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there.<|quote|>“Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.”</|quote|>“And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be | The Outcry |
“And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” | Theign | the equivalent on Lady Grace.”<|quote|>“And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?”</|quote|>“Why, tacked on to a | “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.”<|quote|>“And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?”</|quote|>“Why, tacked on to a value so great and so | sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.”<|quote|>“And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?”</|quote|>“Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John | with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.”<|quote|>“And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?”</|quote|>“Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment | a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.”<|quote|>“And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?”</|quote|>“Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a | This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.”<|quote|>“And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?”</|quote|>“Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold | recognition at least and the formulation of them--that you might abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.”<|quote|>“And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?”</|quote|>“Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to | on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.”<|quote|>“And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?”</|quote|>“Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a | The Outcry |
“Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” | Lord John | the equivalent of twelve thousand?”<|quote|>“Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.”</|quote|>“And where the mischief, if | “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?”<|quote|>“Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.”</|quote|>“And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly | idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?”<|quote|>“Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.”</|quote|>“And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when | whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?”<|quote|>“Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.”</|quote|>“And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid | but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?”<|quote|>“Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.”</|quote|>“And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his | so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?”<|quote|>“Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.”</|quote|>“And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s | abjectly have taken for granted in him: just to show you that in a beastly vulgar age you had, and small wonder, a beastly vulgar imagination. He sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?”<|quote|>“Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.”</|quote|>“And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that | on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?”<|quote|>“Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.”</|quote|>“And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, | The Outcry |
“And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” | Theign | nine or ten would serve.”<|quote|>“And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?”</|quote|>Lord John declined, with a | say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.”<|quote|>“And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?”</|quote|>Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye | already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.”<|quote|>“And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?”</|quote|>Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it | family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.”<|quote|>“And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?”</|quote|>Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case | most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.”<|quote|>“And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?”</|quote|>Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me | learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.”<|quote|>“And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?”</|quote|>Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for | sank thus, surely, in defiance of insistent vulgarity, half his consciousness of his advantages, flattering himself that mere facility and amiability, a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.”<|quote|>“And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?”</|quote|>Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of | much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.”<|quote|>“And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?”</|quote|>Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. | The Outcry |
Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. | No speaker | up nine or ten thousand?”<|quote|>Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously.</|quote|>“Surely you can have no | time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?”<|quote|>Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously.</|quote|>“Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you | twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?”<|quote|>Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously.</|quote|>“Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter | The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?”<|quote|>Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously.</|quote|>“Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as | an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?”<|quote|>Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously.</|quote|>“Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly | man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?”<|quote|>Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously.</|quote|>“Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, | a true effective, a positively ideal suppression of reference in any one to anything that might complicate, alone floated above. This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?”<|quote|>Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously.</|quote|>“Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are | learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?”<|quote|>Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously.</|quote|>“Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s | The Outcry |
“Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” | Lord John | to consider that question seriously.<|quote|>“Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!”</|quote|>“Why not?--when you can see | for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously.<|quote|>“Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!”</|quote|>“Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had | such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously.<|quote|>“Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!”</|quote|>“Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of | you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously.<|quote|>“Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!”</|quote|>“Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady | his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously.<|quote|>“Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!”</|quote|>“Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, | looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously.<|quote|>“Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!”</|quote|>“Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye | This would be quite his religion, you might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously.<|quote|>“Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!”</|quote|>“Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a | I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously.<|quote|>“Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!”</|quote|>“Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with | The Outcry |
“Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” | Theign | can have no difficulty whatever--!”<|quote|>“Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?”</|quote|>“Ah, but the inducement and | that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!”<|quote|>“Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?”</|quote|>“Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord | would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!”<|quote|>“Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?”</|quote|>“Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry | John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!”<|quote|>“Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?”</|quote|>“Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. | air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!”<|quote|>“Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?”</|quote|>“Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if | you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!”<|quote|>“Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?”</|quote|>“Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had | might infer--to cause his hands to ignore in whatever contact any opportunity, however convenient, for an unfair pull. Which habit it was that must have produced in him a sort of ripe and radiant fairness; if it be allowed us, that is, to figure in so shining an air a nobleman of fifty-three, of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!”<|quote|>“Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?”</|quote|>“Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. | only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!”<|quote|>“Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?”</|quote|>“Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on | The Outcry |
“Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” | Lord John | figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?”<|quote|>“Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,”</|quote|>Lord John brightly indicated, “are | as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?”<|quote|>“Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,”</|quote|>Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the | can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?”<|quote|>“Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,”</|quote|>Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has | where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?”<|quote|>“Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,”</|quote|>Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and | or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?”<|quote|>“Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,”</|quote|>Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely | she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?”<|quote|>“Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,”</|quote|>Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was | of an undecided rather than a certified frame or outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?”<|quote|>“Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,”</|quote|>Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you | even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?”<|quote|>“Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,”</|quote|>Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is | The Outcry |
Lord John brightly indicated, | No speaker | and the _quid pro quo_,”<|quote|>Lord John brightly indicated,</|quote|>“are here much greater! In | incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,”<|quote|>Lord John brightly indicated,</|quote|>“are here much greater! In the case you speak of | to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,”<|quote|>Lord John brightly indicated,</|quote|>“are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on | inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,”<|quote|>Lord John brightly indicated,</|quote|>“are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels | be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,”<|quote|>Lord John brightly indicated,</|quote|>“are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you | me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,”<|quote|>Lord John brightly indicated,</|quote|>“are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of | outline, of a head thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,”<|quote|>Lord John brightly indicated,</|quote|>“are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his | spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,”<|quote|>Lord John brightly indicated,</|quote|>“are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no | The Outcry |
“are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” | Lord John | quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated,<|quote|>“are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.”</|quote|>“She has expressed a very | inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated,<|quote|>“are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.”</|quote|>“She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord | old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated,<|quote|>“are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.”</|quote|>“She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? | to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated,<|quote|>“are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.”</|quote|>“She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I | of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated,<|quote|>“are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.”</|quote|>“She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by | suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated,<|quote|>“are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.”</|quote|>“She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; | thinly though neatly covered and not measureably massive, of an almost trivial freshness, of a face marked but by a fine inwrought line or two and lighted by a merely charming expression. You might somehow have traced back the whole character so presented to an ideal privately invoked--that of his establishing in the formal garden of his suffered greatness such easy seats and short perspectives, such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated,<|quote|>“are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.”</|quote|>“She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad | “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated,<|quote|>“are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.”</|quote|>“She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I | The Outcry |
“She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” | Theign | kind and very high opinion.”<|quote|>“She has expressed a very high opinion of you?”</|quote|>--Lord Theign scarce glowed with | has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.”<|quote|>“She has expressed a very high opinion of you?”</|quote|>--Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man | the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.”<|quote|>“She has expressed a very high opinion of you?”</|quote|>--Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” | see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.”<|quote|>“She has expressed a very high opinion of you?”</|quote|>--Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes | so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.”<|quote|>“She has expressed a very high opinion of you?”</|quote|>--Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the | course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.”<|quote|>“She has expressed a very high opinion of you?”</|quote|>--Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who | such winding paths and natural-looking waters, as would mercifully break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.”<|quote|>“She has expressed a very high opinion of you?”</|quote|>--Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender | way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.”<|quote|>“She has expressed a very high opinion of you?”</|quote|>--Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of | The Outcry |
--Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. | No speaker | very high opinion of you?”<|quote|>--Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground.</|quote|>“She has told me she | opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?”<|quote|>--Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground.</|quote|>“She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though | must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?”<|quote|>--Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground.</|quote|>“She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his | such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?”<|quote|>--Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground.</|quote|>“She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if | I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?”<|quote|>--Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground.</|quote|>“She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, | the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?”<|quote|>--Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground.</|quote|>“She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, | break up the scale. You would perhaps indeed have reflected at the same time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?”<|quote|>--Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground.</|quote|>“She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and | decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?”<|quote|>--Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground.</|quote|>“She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, | The Outcry |
“She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” | Lord John | younger man held his ground.<|quote|>“She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.”</|quote|>“A tremendous creature, eh, all | glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground.<|quote|>“She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.”</|quote|>“A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, | Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground.<|quote|>“She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.”</|quote|>“A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying | “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground.<|quote|>“She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.”</|quote|>“A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if | where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground.<|quote|>“She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.”</|quote|>“A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to | flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground.<|quote|>“She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.”</|quote|>“A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend | time that the thought of so much mercy was almost more than anything else the thought of a great option and a great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground.<|quote|>“She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.”</|quote|>“A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor | or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground.<|quote|>“She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.”</|quote|>“A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. | The Outcry |
“A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” | Theign | things--she thinks me perfectly charming.”<|quote|>“A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,”</|quote|>said Lord Theign, “what does | feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.”<|quote|>“A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,”</|quote|>said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very | very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.”<|quote|>“A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,”</|quote|>said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite | of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.”<|quote|>“A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,”</|quote|>said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good | declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.”<|quote|>“A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,”</|quote|>said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a | over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.”<|quote|>“A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,”</|quote|>said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord | great margin--in fine of fifty alternatives. Which remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.”<|quote|>“A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,”</|quote|>said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? | understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.”<|quote|>“A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,”</|quote|>said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John | The Outcry |
said Lord Theign, | No speaker | creature, eh, all round? Then,”<|quote|>said Lord Theign,</|quote|>“what does she want more?” | me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,”<|quote|>said Lord Theign,</|quote|>“what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but | has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,”<|quote|>said Lord Theign,</|quote|>“what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! | incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,”<|quote|>said Lord Theign,</|quote|>“what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord | eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,”<|quote|>said Lord Theign,</|quote|>“what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such | release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,”<|quote|>said Lord Theign,</|quote|>“what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer | remarks of ours, however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,”<|quote|>said Lord Theign,</|quote|>“what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to | our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,”<|quote|>said Lord Theign,</|quote|>“what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they | The Outcry |
“what does she want more?” | Theign | round? Then,” said Lord Theign,<|quote|>“what does she want more?”</|quote|>“She very possibly wants nothing--but | “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign,<|quote|>“what does she want more?”</|quote|>“She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, | very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign,<|quote|>“what does she want more?”</|quote|>“She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes | you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign,<|quote|>“what does she want more?”</|quote|>“She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest | friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign,<|quote|>“what does she want more?”</|quote|>“She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” | damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign,<|quote|>“what does she want more?”</|quote|>“She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, | however, leave his lordship with his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign,<|quote|>“what does she want more?”</|quote|>“She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I | “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign,<|quote|>“what does she want more?”</|quote|>“She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was | The Outcry |
“She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” | Lord John | “what does she want more?”<|quote|>“She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,”</|quote|>his visitor patiently explained, “in | round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?”<|quote|>“She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,”</|quote|>his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my | --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?”<|quote|>“She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,”</|quote|>his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole | must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?”<|quote|>“She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,”</|quote|>his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, | that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?”<|quote|>“She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,”</|quote|>his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the | out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?”<|quote|>“She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,”</|quote|>his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A | his last immediate question on his hands. “Well, yes--_that_, of course, in all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?”<|quote|>“She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,”</|quote|>his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we | and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?”<|quote|>“She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,”</|quote|>his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. | The Outcry |
his visitor patiently explained, | No speaker | that beastly degree, you see,”<|quote|>his visitor patiently explained,</|quote|>“in the cleft stick of | possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,”<|quote|>his visitor patiently explained,</|quote|>“in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. | ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,”<|quote|>his visitor patiently explained,</|quote|>“in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in | marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,”<|quote|>his visitor patiently explained,</|quote|>“in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how | you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,”<|quote|>his visitor patiently explained,</|quote|>“in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the | course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,”<|quote|>his visitor patiently explained,</|quote|>“in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” | all propriety,” his companion has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,”<|quote|>his visitor patiently explained,</|quote|>“in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. | whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,”<|quote|>his visitor patiently explained,</|quote|>“in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that | The Outcry |
“in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” | Lord John | see,” his visitor patiently explained,<|quote|>“in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.”</|quote|>“I assure you I’d chuck | to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained,<|quote|>“in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.”</|quote|>“I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my | me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained,<|quote|>“in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.”</|quote|>“I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” | her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained,<|quote|>“in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.”</|quote|>“I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very | yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained,<|quote|>“in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.”</|quote|>“I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on | into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained,<|quote|>“in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.”</|quote|>“I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that | has meanwhile replied to it. “But I was thinking a little, you understand, of the importance of our own time.” Divinably Lord Theign put himself out less, as we may say, for the comparatively matter-of-course haunters of his garden than for interlopers even but slightly accredited. He seemed thus not at all to strain to “understand” in this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained,<|quote|>“in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.”</|quote|>“I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked | thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained,<|quote|>“in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.”</|quote|>“I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if | The Outcry |
“I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” | Theign | Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.”<|quote|>“I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,”</|quote|>Lord Theign returned with the | my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.”<|quote|>“I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,”</|quote|>Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged | positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.”<|quote|>“I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,”</|quote|>Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, | a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.”<|quote|>“I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,”</|quote|>Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has | John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.”<|quote|>“I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,”</|quote|>Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, | quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.”<|quote|>“I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,”</|quote|>Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right | this particular connection--it would be his familiarly amusing friend Lord John, clearly, who must do most of the work for him. “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.”<|quote|>“I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,”</|quote|>Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world | incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.”<|quote|>“I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,”</|quote|>Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to | The Outcry |
Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. | No speaker | be really good to her,”<|quote|>Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion.</|quote|>“You _will_ just tell her | if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,”<|quote|>Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion.</|quote|>“You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how | there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,”<|quote|>Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion.</|quote|>“You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought | Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,”<|quote|>Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion.</|quote|>“You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in | grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,”<|quote|>Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion.</|quote|>“You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your | that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,”<|quote|>Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion.</|quote|>“You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! | “‘Our own’ in the sense of yours and mine?” “Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,”<|quote|>Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion.</|quote|>“You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer | dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,”<|quote|>Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion.</|quote|>“You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving | The Outcry |
“You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” | Lord John | It only encouraged his companion.<|quote|>“You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?”</|quote|>This appeal required a moment--a | returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion.<|quote|>“You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?”</|quote|>This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You | touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion.<|quote|>“You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?”</|quote|>This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very | to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion.<|quote|>“You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?”</|quote|>This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of | other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion.<|quote|>“You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?”</|quote|>This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to | with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion.<|quote|>“You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?”</|quote|>This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that | mine and Lady Imber’s, yes--and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion.<|quote|>“You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?”</|quote|>This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with | but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion.<|quote|>“You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?”</|quote|>This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care | The Outcry |
This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. | No speaker | honestly believe I shall be?”<|quote|>This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him.</|quote|>“You truly hold that that | and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?”<|quote|>This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him.</|quote|>“You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my | “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?”<|quote|>This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him.</|quote|>“You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use | positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?”<|quote|>This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him.</|quote|>“You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This | his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?”<|quote|>This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him.</|quote|>“You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission | Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?”<|quote|>This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him.</|quote|>“You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. | waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?”<|quote|>This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him.</|quote|>“You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were | yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?”<|quote|>This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him.</|quote|>“You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly | The Outcry |
“You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” | Theign | moment--a longer look at him.<|quote|>“You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?”</|quote|>“That’s the conviction I entertain.” | be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him.<|quote|>“You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?”</|quote|>“That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, | my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him.<|quote|>“You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?”</|quote|>“That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment | don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him.<|quote|>“You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?”</|quote|>“That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of | just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him.<|quote|>“You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?”</|quote|>“That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman | of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him.<|quote|>“You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?”</|quote|>“That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your | from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him.<|quote|>“You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?”</|quote|>“That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas | year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him.<|quote|>“You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?”</|quote|>“That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. | The Outcry |
“That’s the conviction I entertain.” | Lord John | weight, will do your job?”<|quote|>“That’s the conviction I entertain.”</|quote|>Lord Theign thought again. “Well, | guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?”<|quote|>“That’s the conviction I entertain.”</|quote|>Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, | the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?”<|quote|>“That’s the conviction I entertain.”</|quote|>Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, | it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?”<|quote|>“That’s the conviction I entertain.”</|quote|>Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord | of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?”<|quote|>“That’s the conviction I entertain.”</|quote|>Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to | Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?”<|quote|>“That’s the conviction I entertain.”</|quote|>Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend | was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?”<|quote|>“That’s the conviction I entertain.”</|quote|>Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make | can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?”<|quote|>“That’s the conviction I entertain.”</|quote|>Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his | The Outcry |
Lord Theign thought again. | No speaker | “That’s the conviction I entertain.”<|quote|>Lord Theign thought again.</|quote|>“Well, even if your conviction’s | weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.”<|quote|>Lord Theign thought again.</|quote|>“Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell | encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.”<|quote|>Lord Theign thought again.</|quote|>“Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his | that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.”<|quote|>Lord Theign thought again.</|quote|>“Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord | glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.”<|quote|>Lord Theign thought again.</|quote|>“Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” | such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.”<|quote|>Lord Theign thought again.</|quote|>“Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great | her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.”<|quote|>Lord Theign thought again.</|quote|>“Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his | but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.”<|quote|>Lord Theign thought again.</|quote|>“Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, | The Outcry |
“Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” | Theign | entertain.” Lord Theign thought again.<|quote|>“Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.”</|quote|>“Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when | job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again.<|quote|>“Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.”</|quote|>“Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a | _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again.<|quote|>“Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.”</|quote|>“Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back | ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again.<|quote|>“Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.”</|quote|>“Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to | the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again.<|quote|>“Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.”</|quote|>“Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of | nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again.<|quote|>“Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.”</|quote|>“Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, | that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she _is_, don’t you know? What she put to me” --the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again.<|quote|>“Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.”</|quote|>“Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, | man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again.<|quote|>“Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.”</|quote|>“Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, | The Outcry |
“Oh,” | Lord John | use for me to fumble.”<|quote|>“Oh,”</|quote|>Lord John laughed, “when a | will be of the least use for me to fumble.”<|quote|>“Oh,”</|quote|>Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous | that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.”<|quote|>“Oh,”</|quote|>Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from | didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.”<|quote|>“Oh,”</|quote|>Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our | tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.”<|quote|>“Oh,”</|quote|>Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours | with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.”<|quote|>“Oh,”</|quote|>Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his | ground a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.”<|quote|>“Oh,”</|quote|>Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in | that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.”<|quote|>“Oh,”</|quote|>Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal | The Outcry |
Lord John laughed, | No speaker | for me to fumble.” “Oh,”<|quote|>Lord John laughed,</|quote|>“when a man has such | be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,”<|quote|>Lord John laughed,</|quote|>“when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” | friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,”<|quote|>Lord John laughed,</|quote|>“when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of | believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,”<|quote|>Lord John laughed,</|quote|>“when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. | creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,”<|quote|>Lord John laughed,</|quote|>“when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked | a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,”<|quote|>Lord John laughed,</|quote|>“when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It | a little, but proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,”<|quote|>Lord John laughed,</|quote|>“when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his | you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,”<|quote|>Lord John laughed,</|quote|>“when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to | The Outcry |
“when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” | Lord John | fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed,<|quote|>“when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!”</|quote|>He pulled up, however, as, | least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed,<|quote|>“when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!”</|quote|>He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye | by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed,<|quote|>“when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!”</|quote|>He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, | really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed,<|quote|>“when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!”</|quote|>He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. | round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed,<|quote|>“when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!”</|quote|>He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, | fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed,<|quote|>“when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!”</|quote|>He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to | proceeded further-- “what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed,<|quote|>“when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!”</|quote|>He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to | there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed,<|quote|>“when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!”</|quote|>He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw | The Outcry |
He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. | No speaker | a tremendous assortment of breeches--!”<|quote|>He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms.</|quote|>“If it’s a question of | “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!”<|quote|>He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms.</|quote|>“If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely | conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!”<|quote|>He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms.</|quote|>“If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. | spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!”<|quote|>He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms.</|quote|>“If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of | “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!”<|quote|>He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms.</|quote|>“If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign | that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!”<|quote|>He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms.</|quote|>“If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while | grand way of looking _all_ questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!”<|quote|>He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms.</|quote|>“If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a | a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!”<|quote|>He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms.</|quote|>“If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and | The Outcry |
“If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” | Lord John | vista of the open rooms.<|quote|>“If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!”</|quote|>This personage had come back | his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms.<|quote|>“If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!”</|quote|>This personage had come back from his tour of observation | into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms.<|quote|>“If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!”</|quote|>This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, | honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms.<|quote|>“If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!”</|quote|>This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind | cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms.<|quote|>“If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!”</|quote|>This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he | I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms.<|quote|>“If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!”</|quote|>This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the | decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer--‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms.<|quote|>“If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!”</|quote|>This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, | little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms.<|quote|>“If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!”</|quote|>This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord | The Outcry |
This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. | No speaker | ‘em--here precisely is my man!”<|quote|>This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm.</|quote|>“I’ve had awfully to fail | question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!”<|quote|>This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm.</|quote|>“I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I | use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!”<|quote|>This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm.</|quote|>“I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To | him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!”<|quote|>This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm.</|quote|>“I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of | I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!”<|quote|>This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm.</|quote|>“I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair | call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!”<|quote|>This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm.</|quote|>“I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more | _she_ calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.” Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!”<|quote|>This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm.</|quote|>“I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it | so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!”<|quote|>This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm.</|quote|>“I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” | The Outcry |
“I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” | Lord John | Lord John’s welcome was warm.<|quote|>“I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.”</|quote|>VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably | to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm.<|quote|>“I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.”</|quote|>VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for | the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm.<|quote|>“I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.”</|quote|>VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and | conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm.<|quote|>“I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.”</|quote|>VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” | pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm.<|quote|>“I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.”</|quote|>VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took | horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm.<|quote|>“I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.”</|quote|>VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then | how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me--successfully!--for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt--that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm.<|quote|>“I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.”</|quote|>VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as if I have an interest?” Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, | of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm.<|quote|>“I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.”</|quote|>VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a | The Outcry |
VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. | No speaker | introduce you to our host.”<|quote|>VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance.</|quote|>“Happy to meet you--especially in | Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.”<|quote|>VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance.</|quote|>“Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” | tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.”<|quote|>VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance.</|quote|>“Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who | John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.”<|quote|>VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance.</|quote|>“Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, | you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.”<|quote|>VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance.</|quote|>“Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d | only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.”<|quote|>VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance.</|quote|>“Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly | I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.”<|quote|>VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance.</|quote|>“Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as if I have an interest?” Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear | but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.”<|quote|>VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance.</|quote|>“Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience | The Outcry |
“Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” | Bender | had use for this assistance.<|quote|>“Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.”</|quote|>To which he added while | Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance.<|quote|>“Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.”</|quote|>To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood | exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance.<|quote|>“Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.”</|quote|>To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out | He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance.<|quote|>“Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.”</|quote|>To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. | spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance.<|quote|>“Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.”</|quote|>To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite | must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance.<|quote|>“Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.”</|quote|>To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of | scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations--by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance.<|quote|>“Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.”</|quote|>To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as if I have an interest?” Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you | charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance.<|quote|>“Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.”</|quote|>To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, | The Outcry |
To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: | No speaker | your beautiful home, Lord Theign.”<|quote|>To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach:</|quote|>“I’ve been round, by your | “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.”<|quote|>To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach:</|quote|>“I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light | warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.”<|quote|>To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach:</|quote|>“I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, | caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.”<|quote|>To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach:</|quote|>“I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after | her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.”<|quote|>To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach:</|quote|>“I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And | Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.”<|quote|>To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach:</|quote|>“I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties | hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.” Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.”<|quote|>To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach:</|quote|>“I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as if I have an interest?” Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!” “Oh, I don’t mean at your expense,” Lord John laughed-- “I mean at Mr. | pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.”<|quote|>To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach:</|quote|>“I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me | The Outcry |
“I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” | Bender | good-humouredly passive to his approach:<|quote|>“I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.”</|quote|>Mr. Bender, out of his | the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach:<|quote|>“I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.”</|quote|>Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a | of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach:<|quote|>“I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.”</|quote|>Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all | _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach:<|quote|>“I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.”</|quote|>Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get | required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach:<|quote|>“I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.”</|quote|>Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great | on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach:<|quote|>“I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.”</|quote|>Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all | a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach:<|quote|>“I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.”</|quote|>Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as if I have an interest?” Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!” “Oh, I don’t mean at your expense,” Lord John laughed-- “I mean at Mr. Bender’s!” “Well, go ahead, Lord John,” said that gentleman, always easy, but always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything-- “go ahead, but don’t sweetly hope to create me in | greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach:<|quote|>“I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.”</|quote|>Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show | The Outcry |
Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. | No speaker | to allow me any amount.”<|quote|>Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure.</|quote|>“A young, spare, nervous gentleman | gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.”<|quote|>Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure.</|quote|>“A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an | home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.”<|quote|>Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure.</|quote|>“A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope | John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.”<|quote|>Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure.</|quote|>“A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, | “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.”<|quote|>Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure.</|quote|>“A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” | the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.”<|quote|>Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure.</|quote|>“A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less | I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.”<|quote|>Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure.</|quote|>“A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as if I have an interest?” Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!” “Oh, I don’t mean at your expense,” Lord John laughed-- “I mean at Mr. Bender’s!” “Well, go ahead, Lord John,” said that gentleman, always easy, but always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything-- “go ahead, but don’t sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn’t already exist in the germ. The attempt has often been made, | let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.”<|quote|>Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure.</|quote|>“A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite | The Outcry |
“A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” | Bender | suggestive hand this contributory figure.<|quote|>“A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?”</|quote|>he asked of Lord John. | abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure.<|quote|>“A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?”</|quote|>he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and | to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure.<|quote|>“A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?”</|quote|>he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to | on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure.<|quote|>“A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?”</|quote|>he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took | very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure.<|quote|>“A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?”</|quote|>he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s | that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure.<|quote|>“A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?”</|quote|>he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how | all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above----” “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure.<|quote|>“A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?”</|quote|>he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as if I have an interest?” Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!” “Oh, I don’t mean at your expense,” Lord John laughed-- “I mean at Mr. Bender’s!” “Well, go ahead, Lord John,” said that gentleman, always easy, but always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything-- “go ahead, but don’t sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn’t already exist in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here--has in fact been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I’ve got some | with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure.<|quote|>“A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?”</|quote|>he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the | The Outcry |
he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. | No speaker | A friend of yours too?”<|quote|>he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic.</|quote|>“No, the gentleman is no | eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?”<|quote|>he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic.</|quote|>“No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, | haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?”<|quote|>he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic.</|quote|>“No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. | VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?”<|quote|>he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic.</|quote|>“No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and | John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?”<|quote|>he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic.</|quote|>“No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led | eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?”<|quote|>he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic.</|quote|>“No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, | “Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?” --Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?”<|quote|>he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic.</|quote|>“No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as if I have an interest?” Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!” “Oh, I don’t mean at your expense,” Lord John laughed-- “I mean at Mr. Bender’s!” “Well, go ahead, Lord John,” said that gentleman, always easy, but always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything-- “go ahead, but don’t sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn’t already exist in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here--has in fact been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I’ve got some peculiarity, for it doesn’t seem as if the thing could be | good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?”<|quote|>he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic.</|quote|>“No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his | The Outcry |
“No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” | Lord John | answer was prompt and emphatic.<|quote|>“No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.”</|quote|>“A friend of my daughter’s,” | asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic.<|quote|>“No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.”</|quote|>“A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I | who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic.<|quote|>“No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.”</|quote|>“A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair | assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic.<|quote|>“No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.”</|quote|>“A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” | breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic.<|quote|>“No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.”</|quote|>“A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” | more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic.<|quote|>“No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.”</|quote|>“A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there | reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic.<|quote|>“No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.”</|quote|>“A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as if I have an interest?” Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!” “Oh, I don’t mean at your expense,” Lord John laughed-- “I mean at Mr. Bender’s!” “Well, go ahead, Lord John,” said that gentleman, always easy, but always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything-- “go ahead, but don’t sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn’t already exist in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here--has in fact been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I’ve got some peculiarity, for it doesn’t seem as if the thing could be done. If the germ is there, on the other hand,” Mr. Bender | I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic.<|quote|>“No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.”</|quote|>“A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to | The Outcry |
“A friend of my daughter’s,” | Theign | all of mine, Mr. Bender.”<|quote|>“A friend of my daughter’s,”</|quote|>Lord Theign easily explained. “I | gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.”<|quote|>“A friend of my daughter’s,”</|quote|>Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” | his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.”<|quote|>“A friend of my daughter’s,”</|quote|>Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the | which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.”<|quote|>“A friend of my daughter’s,”</|quote|>Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture | the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.”<|quote|>“A friend of my daughter’s,”</|quote|>Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s | see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.”<|quote|>“A friend of my daughter’s,”</|quote|>Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. | “Of course we take _everything_ into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.”<|quote|>“A friend of my daughter’s,”</|quote|>Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as if I have an interest?” Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!” “Oh, I don’t mean at your expense,” Lord John laughed-- “I mean at Mr. Bender’s!” “Well, go ahead, Lord John,” said that gentleman, always easy, but always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything-- “go ahead, but don’t sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn’t already exist in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here--has in fact been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I’ve got some peculiarity, for it doesn’t seem as if the thing could be done. If the germ is there, on the other hand,” Mr. Bender conceded, “it develops independently of | myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.”<|quote|>“A friend of my daughter’s,”</|quote|>Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender | The Outcry |
Lord Theign easily explained. | No speaker | “A friend of my daughter’s,”<|quote|>Lord Theign easily explained.</|quote|>“I hope they’re looking after | all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,”<|quote|>Lord Theign easily explained.</|quote|>“I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care | a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,”<|quote|>Lord Theign easily explained.</|quote|>“I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a | master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,”<|quote|>Lord Theign easily explained.</|quote|>“I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to | open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,”<|quote|>Lord Theign easily explained.</|quote|>“I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer | “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,”<|quote|>Lord Theign easily explained.</|quote|>“I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even | into account--or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,”<|quote|>Lord Theign easily explained.</|quote|>“I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as if I have an interest?” Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!” “Oh, I don’t mean at your expense,” Lord John laughed-- “I mean at Mr. Bender’s!” “Well, go ahead, Lord John,” said that gentleman, always easy, but always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything-- “go ahead, but don’t sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn’t already exist in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here--has in fact been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I’ve got some peculiarity, for it doesn’t seem as if the thing could be done. If the germ is there, on the other hand,” Mr. Bender conceded, “it develops independently of all encouragement.” Lord John | it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,”<|quote|>Lord Theign easily explained.</|quote|>“I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how | The Outcry |
“I hope they’re looking after him.” | Theign | daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained.<|quote|>“I hope they’re looking after him.”</|quote|>“Oh, they took care he | Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained.<|quote|>“I hope they’re looking after him.”</|quote|>“Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and | contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained.<|quote|>“I hope they’re looking after him.”</|quote|>“Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect | good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained.<|quote|>“I hope they’re looking after him.”</|quote|>“Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it | a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained.<|quote|>“I hope they’re looking after him.”</|quote|>“Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to | of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained.<|quote|>“I hope they’re looking after him.”</|quote|>“Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an | my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained.<|quote|>“I hope they’re looking after him.”</|quote|>“Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as if I have an interest?” Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!” “Oh, I don’t mean at your expense,” Lord John laughed-- “I mean at Mr. Bender’s!” “Well, go ahead, Lord John,” said that gentleman, always easy, but always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything-- “go ahead, but don’t sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn’t already exist in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here--has in fact been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I’ve got some peculiarity, for it doesn’t seem as if the thing could be done. If the germ is there, on the other hand,” Mr. Bender conceded, “it develops independently of all encouragement.” Lord John communicated again as in a particular | Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained.<|quote|>“I hope they’re looking after him.”</|quote|>“Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, | The Outcry |
“Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” | Bender | hope they’re looking after him.”<|quote|>“Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,”</|quote|>Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so | Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.”<|quote|>“Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,”</|quote|>Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up | gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.”<|quote|>“Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,”</|quote|>Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more | been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.”<|quote|>“Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,”</|quote|>Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your | ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.”<|quote|>“Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,”</|quote|>Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a | Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.”<|quote|>“Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,”</|quote|>Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees | you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.”<|quote|>“Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,”</|quote|>Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as if I have an interest?” Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!” “Oh, I don’t mean at your expense,” Lord John laughed-- “I mean at Mr. Bender’s!” “Well, go ahead, Lord John,” said that gentleman, always easy, but always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything-- “go ahead, but don’t sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn’t already exist in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here--has in fact been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I’ve got some peculiarity, for it doesn’t seem as if the thing could be done. If the germ is there, on the other hand,” Mr. Bender conceded, “it develops independently of all encouragement.” Lord John communicated again as in a particular sense with Lord Theign. “He thinks I really mean to _offer_ him something!” Lord Theign, who seemed to wish to advertise a | ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.”<|quote|>“Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,”</|quote|>Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk | The Outcry |
Mr. Bender conscientiously added, | No speaker | good as to move something,”<|quote|>Mr. Bender conscientiously added,</|quote|>“so that he could get | any extent; and were so good as to move something,”<|quote|>Mr. Bender conscientiously added,</|quote|>“so that he could get up on a chair and | emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,”<|quote|>Mr. Bender conscientiously added,</|quote|>“so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have | there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,”<|quote|>Mr. Bender conscientiously added,</|quote|>“so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our | the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,”<|quote|>Mr. Bender conscientiously added,</|quote|>“so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me | it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,”<|quote|>Mr. Bender conscientiously added,</|quote|>“so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people | conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,”<|quote|>Mr. Bender conscientiously added,</|quote|>“so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as if I have an interest?” Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!” “Oh, I don’t mean at your expense,” Lord John laughed-- “I mean at Mr. Bender’s!” “Well, go ahead, Lord John,” said that gentleman, always easy, but always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything-- “go ahead, but don’t sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn’t already exist in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here--has in fact been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I’ve got some peculiarity, for it doesn’t seem as if the thing could be done. If the germ is there, on the other hand,” Mr. Bender conceded, “it develops independently of all encouragement.” Lord John communicated again as in a particular sense with Lord Theign. “He thinks I really mean to _offer_ him something!” Lord Theign, who seemed to wish to advertise a degree of detachment from | a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,”<|quote|>Mr. Bender conscientiously added,</|quote|>“so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that | The Outcry |
“so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” | Bender | something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added,<|quote|>“so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.”</|quote|>This was a touch, however, | so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added,<|quote|>“so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.”</|quote|>This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord | is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added,<|quote|>“so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.”</|quote|>This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would | to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added,<|quote|>“so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.”</|quote|>This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to | Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added,<|quote|>“so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.”</|quote|>This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I | difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added,<|quote|>“so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.”</|quote|>This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they | of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added,<|quote|>“so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.”</|quote|>This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as if I have an interest?” Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!” “Oh, I don’t mean at your expense,” Lord John laughed-- “I mean at Mr. Bender’s!” “Well, go ahead, Lord John,” said that gentleman, always easy, but always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything-- “go ahead, but don’t sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn’t already exist in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here--has in fact been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I’ve got some peculiarity, for it doesn’t seem as if the thing could be done. If the germ is there, on the other hand,” Mr. Bender conceded, “it develops independently of all encouragement.” Lord John communicated again as in a particular sense with Lord Theign. “He thinks I really mean to _offer_ him something!” Lord Theign, who seemed to wish to advertise a degree of detachment from the issue, or from any other such, strolled off, in his restlessness, toward the door | I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added,<|quote|>“so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.”</|quote|>This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little | The Outcry |
This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. | No speaker | see straight into the Moretto.”<|quote|>This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably.</|quote|>“Up on a chair? I | up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.”<|quote|>This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably.</|quote|>“Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another | Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.”<|quote|>This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably.</|quote|>“Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these | suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.”<|quote|>This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably.</|quote|>“Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, | Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.”<|quote|>This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably.</|quote|>“Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, | to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.”<|quote|>This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably.</|quote|>“Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had | a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.”<|quote|>This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably.</|quote|>“Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as if I have an interest?” Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!” “Oh, I don’t mean at your expense,” Lord John laughed-- “I mean at Mr. Bender’s!” “Well, go ahead, Lord John,” said that gentleman, always easy, but always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything-- “go ahead, but don’t sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn’t already exist in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here--has in fact been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I’ve got some peculiarity, for it doesn’t seem as if the thing could be done. If the germ is there, on the other hand,” Mr. Bender conceded, “it develops independently of all encouragement.” Lord John communicated again as in a particular sense with Lord Theign. “He thinks I really mean to _offer_ him something!” Lord Theign, who seemed to wish to advertise a degree of detachment from the issue, or from any other such, strolled off, in his restlessness, toward the door that opened to the terrace, only stopping on his way to light | told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.”<|quote|>This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably.</|quote|>“Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example | The Outcry |
“Up on a chair? I say!” | Lord John | to affect Lord John unfavourably.<|quote|>“Up on a chair? I say!”</|quote|>Mr. Bender took another view. | a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably.<|quote|>“Up on a chair? I say!”</|quote|>Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up | care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably.<|quote|>“Up on a chair? I say!”</|quote|>Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to | guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably.<|quote|>“Up on a chair? I say!”</|quote|>Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine | me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably.<|quote|>“Up on a chair? I say!”</|quote|>Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord | out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably.<|quote|>“Up on a chair? I say!”</|quote|>Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if | staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably.<|quote|>“Up on a chair? I say!”</|quote|>Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as if I have an interest?” Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!” “Oh, I don’t mean at your expense,” Lord John laughed-- “I mean at Mr. Bender’s!” “Well, go ahead, Lord John,” said that gentleman, always easy, but always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything-- “go ahead, but don’t sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn’t already exist in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here--has in fact been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I’ve got some peculiarity, for it doesn’t seem as if the thing could be done. If the germ is there, on the other hand,” Mr. Bender conceded, “it develops independently of all encouragement.” Lord John communicated again as in a particular sense with Lord Theign. “He thinks I really mean to _offer_ him something!” Lord Theign, who seemed to wish to advertise a degree of detachment from the issue, or from any other such, strolled off, in his restlessness, toward the door that opened to the terrace, only stopping on his way to light a cigarette from a matchbox on | your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably.<|quote|>“Up on a chair? I say!”</|quote|>Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more | The Outcry |
Mr. Bender took another view. | No speaker | on a chair? I say!”<|quote|>Mr. Bender took another view.</|quote|>“Why, I got right up | affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!”<|quote|>Mr. Bender took another view.</|quote|>“Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d | and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!”<|quote|>Mr. Bender took another view.</|quote|>“Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that | of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!”<|quote|>Mr. Bender took another view.</|quote|>“Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It | to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!”<|quote|>Mr. Bender took another view.</|quote|>“Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. | I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!”<|quote|>Mr. Bender took another view.</|quote|>“Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors | idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!”<|quote|>Mr. Bender took another view.</|quote|>“Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as if I have an interest?” Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!” “Oh, I don’t mean at your expense,” Lord John laughed-- “I mean at Mr. Bender’s!” “Well, go ahead, Lord John,” said that gentleman, always easy, but always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything-- “go ahead, but don’t sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn’t already exist in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here--has in fact been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I’ve got some peculiarity, for it doesn’t seem as if the thing could be done. If the germ is there, on the other hand,” Mr. Bender conceded, “it develops independently of all encouragement.” Lord John communicated again as in a particular sense with Lord Theign. “He thinks I really mean to _offer_ him something!” Lord Theign, who seemed to wish to advertise a degree of detachment from the issue, or from any other such, strolled off, in his restlessness, toward the door that opened to the terrace, only stopping on his way to light a cigarette from a matchbox on a small table. It was | you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!”<|quote|>Mr. Bender took another view.</|quote|>“Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was | The Outcry |
“Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” | Bender | Mr. Bender took another view.<|quote|>“Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested”</|quote|>--the proprietor of the picture | on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view.<|quote|>“Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested”</|quote|>--the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- | and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view.<|quote|>“Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested”</|quote|>--the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about | of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view.<|quote|>“Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested”</|quote|>--the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” | Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view.<|quote|>“Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested”</|quote|>--the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a | really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view.<|quote|>“Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested”</|quote|>--the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, | I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition--” Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view.<|quote|>“Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested”</|quote|>--the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as if I have an interest?” Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!” “Oh, I don’t mean at your expense,” Lord John laughed-- “I mean at Mr. Bender’s!” “Well, go ahead, Lord John,” said that gentleman, always easy, but always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything-- “go ahead, but don’t sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn’t already exist in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here--has in fact been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I’ve got some peculiarity, for it doesn’t seem as if the thing could be done. If the germ is there, on the other hand,” Mr. Bender conceded, “it develops independently of all encouragement.” Lord John communicated again as in a particular sense with Lord Theign. “He thinks I really mean to _offer_ him something!” Lord Theign, who seemed to wish to advertise a degree of detachment from the issue, or from any other such, strolled off, in his restlessness, toward the door that opened to the terrace, only stopping on his way to light a cigarette from a matchbox on a small table. It was but after doing so that he made the remark: “Ah, Mr. Bender may easily be too much for you!” “That makes | guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view.<|quote|>“Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested”</|quote|>--the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you | The Outcry |
--the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- | No speaker | He got me quite interested”<|quote|>--the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know--</|quote|>“in that Moretto.” And it | have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested”<|quote|>--the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know--</|quote|>“in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that | and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested”<|quote|>--the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know--</|quote|>“in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more | “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested”<|quote|>--the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know--</|quote|>“in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left | which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested”<|quote|>--the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know--</|quote|>“in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer | then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested”<|quote|>--the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know--</|quote|>“in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. | was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested”<|quote|>--the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know--</|quote|>“in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as if I have an interest?” Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!” “Oh, I don’t mean at your expense,” Lord John laughed-- “I mean at Mr. Bender’s!” “Well, go ahead, Lord John,” said that gentleman, always easy, but always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything-- “go ahead, but don’t sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn’t already exist in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here--has in fact been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I’ve got some peculiarity, for it doesn’t seem as if the thing could be done. If the germ is there, on the other hand,” Mr. Bender conceded, “it develops independently of all encouragement.” Lord John communicated again as in a particular sense with Lord Theign. “He thinks I really mean to _offer_ him something!” Lord Theign, who seemed to wish to advertise a degree of detachment from the issue, or from any other such, strolled off, in his restlessness, toward the door that opened to the terrace, only stopping on his way to light a cigarette from a matchbox on a small table. It was but after doing so that he made the remark: “Ah, Mr. Bender may easily be too much for you!” “That makes me the more sorry, sir,” said his visitor, “not to | set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested”<|quote|>--the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know--</|quote|>“in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward | The Outcry |
“in that Moretto.” | Bender | would perhaps care to know--<|quote|>“in that Moretto.”</|quote|>And it was on these | --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know--<|quote|>“in that Moretto.”</|quote|>And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued | however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know--<|quote|>“in that Moretto.”</|quote|>And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which | hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know--<|quote|>“in that Moretto.”</|quote|>And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous | passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know--<|quote|>“in that Moretto.”</|quote|>And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the | shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know--<|quote|>“in that Moretto.”</|quote|>And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a | equivalent on Lady Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know--<|quote|>“in that Moretto.”</|quote|>And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as if I have an interest?” Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!” “Oh, I don’t mean at your expense,” Lord John laughed-- “I mean at Mr. Bender’s!” “Well, go ahead, Lord John,” said that gentleman, always easy, but always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything-- “go ahead, but don’t sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn’t already exist in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here--has in fact been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I’ve got some peculiarity, for it doesn’t seem as if the thing could be done. If the germ is there, on the other hand,” Mr. Bender conceded, “it develops independently of all encouragement.” Lord John communicated again as in a particular sense with Lord Theign. “He thinks I really mean to _offer_ him something!” Lord Theign, who seemed to wish to advertise a degree of detachment from the issue, or from any other such, strolled off, in his restlessness, toward the door that opened to the terrace, only stopping on his way to light a cigarette from a matchbox on a small table. It was but after doing so that he made the remark: “Ah, Mr. Bender may easily be too much for you!” “That makes me the more sorry, sir,” said his visitor, “not to have been enough | I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know--<|quote|>“in that Moretto.”</|quote|>And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly | The Outcry |
And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. | No speaker | to know-- “in that Moretto.”<|quote|>And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance.</|quote|>“I take it that your | the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.”<|quote|>And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance.</|quote|>“I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, | to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.”<|quote|>And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance.</|quote|>“I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, | after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.”<|quote|>And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance.</|quote|>“I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to | approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.”<|quote|>And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance.</|quote|>“I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first | appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.”<|quote|>And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance.</|quote|>“I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be | Grace.” “And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?” “Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.”<|quote|>And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance.</|quote|>“I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as if I have an interest?” Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!” “Oh, I don’t mean at your expense,” Lord John laughed-- “I mean at Mr. Bender’s!” “Well, go ahead, Lord John,” said that gentleman, always easy, but always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything-- “go ahead, but don’t sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn’t already exist in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here--has in fact been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I’ve got some peculiarity, for it doesn’t seem as if the thing could be done. If the germ is there, on the other hand,” Mr. Bender conceded, “it develops independently of all encouragement.” Lord John communicated again as in a particular sense with Lord Theign. “He thinks I really mean to _offer_ him something!” Lord Theign, who seemed to wish to advertise a degree of detachment from the issue, or from any other such, strolled off, in his restlessness, toward the door that opened to the terrace, only stopping on his way to light a cigarette from a matchbox on a small table. It was but after doing so that he made the remark: “Ah, Mr. Bender may easily be too much for you!” “That makes me the more sorry, sir,” said his visitor, “not to have been enough for _you!_” “I risk it, at any rate,” Lord John went on-- | fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.”<|quote|>And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance.</|quote|>“I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It | The Outcry |
“I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.” | Bender | Mr. Bender continued to advance.<|quote|>“I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.”</|quote|>On which he paused as | was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance.<|quote|>“I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.”</|quote|>On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show | Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance.<|quote|>“I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.”</|quote|>On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these | butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance.<|quote|>“I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.”</|quote|>On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you | nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance.<|quote|>“I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.”</|quote|>On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less | that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance.<|quote|>“I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.”</|quote|>On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” | tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.” “And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance.<|quote|>“I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.”</|quote|>On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as if I have an interest?” Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!” “Oh, I don’t mean at your expense,” Lord John laughed-- “I mean at Mr. Bender’s!” “Well, go ahead, Lord John,” said that gentleman, always easy, but always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything-- “go ahead, but don’t sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn’t already exist in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here--has in fact been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I’ve got some peculiarity, for it doesn’t seem as if the thing could be done. If the germ is there, on the other hand,” Mr. Bender conceded, “it develops independently of all encouragement.” Lord John communicated again as in a particular sense with Lord Theign. “He thinks I really mean to _offer_ him something!” Lord Theign, who seemed to wish to advertise a degree of detachment from the issue, or from any other such, strolled off, in his restlessness, toward the door that opened to the terrace, only stopping on his way to light a cigarette from a matchbox on a small table. It was but after doing so that he made the remark: “Ah, Mr. Bender may easily be too much for you!” “That makes me the more sorry, sir,” said his visitor, “not to have been enough for _you!_” “I risk it, at any rate,” Lord John went on-- “I put you, Bender, the question of whether you wouldn’t Move,’ as you say, to acquire that Moretto.” Mr. Bender’s large face had a commensurate gaze. “As I say? I haven’t said anything of the sort!” | positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance.<|quote|>“I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.”</|quote|>On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. “It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him | The Outcry |
On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance. | No speaker | our moving any more furniture.”<|quote|>On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance.</|quote|>“It _has_ yet, my impression | too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.”<|quote|>On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance.</|quote|>“It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led | that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.”<|quote|>On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance.</|quote|>“It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The | that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.”<|quote|>On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance.</|quote|>“It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while | “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.”<|quote|>On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance.</|quote|>“It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m | very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.”<|quote|>On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance.</|quote|>“It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of | inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?” Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever--!” “Why not?--when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have _liked_ to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?” “Ah, but the inducement and the _quid pro quo_,” Lord John brightly indicated, “are here much greater! In the case you speak of you will only have removed the incubus--which, I grant you, she must and you must feel as horrid. In this other you pacify Lady Imber _and_ marry Lady Grace: marry her to a man who has set his heart on her and of whom she has just expressed--to himself--a very kind and very high opinion.” “She has expressed a very high opinion of you?” --Lord Theign scarce glowed with credulity. But the younger man held his ground. “She has told me she thoroughly likes me and that--though a fellow feels an ass repeating such things--she thinks me perfectly charming.” “A tremendous creature, eh, all round? Then,” said Lord Theign, “what does she want more?” “She very possibly wants nothing--but I’m to that beastly degree, you see,” his visitor patiently explained, “in the cleft stick of my fearfully positive mother’s wants. Those are her ‘terms,’ and I don’t mind saying that they’re most disagreeable to me--I quite hate ‘em: there! Only I think it makes a jolly difference that I wouldn’t touch ‘em with a long pole if my personal feeling--in respect to Lady Grace--wasn’t so immensely enlisted.” “I assure you I’d chuck ‘em out of window, my boy, if I didn’t believe you’d be really good to her,” Lord Theign returned with the properest spirit. It only encouraged his companion. “You _will_ just tell her then, now and here, how good you honestly believe I shall be?” This appeal required a moment--a longer look at him. “You truly hold that that friendly guarantee, backed by my parental weight, will do your job?” “That’s the conviction I entertain.” Lord Theign thought again. “Well, even if your conviction’s just, that still doesn’t tell me into which of my very empty pockets it will be of the least use for me to fumble.” “Oh,” Lord John laughed, “when a man has such a tremendous assortment of breeches--!” He pulled up, however, as, in his motion, his eye caught the great vista of the open rooms. “If it’s a question of pockets--and what’s _in_ ‘em--here precisely is my man!” This personage had come back from his tour of observation and was now, on the threshold of the hall, exhibited to Lord Theign as well. Lord John’s welcome was warm. “I’ve had awfully to fail you, Mr. Bender, but I was on the point of joining you. Let me, however, still better, introduce you to our host.” VII Mr. Bender indeed, formidably advancing, scarce had use for this assistance. “Happy to meet you--especially in your beautiful home, Lord Theign.” To which he added while the master of Dedborough stood good-humouredly passive to his approach: “I’ve been round, by your kind permission and the light of nature, and haven’t required support; though if I had there’s a gentleman there who seemed prepared to allow me any amount.” Mr. Bender, out of his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.”<|quote|>On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance.</|quote|>“It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a minute Lord Theign had been reached by his friend’s mute pressure. “‘Something’?” “Something, Mr. Bender?” Lord John insisted. It made their visitor rather sharply fix him. “Why, have _you_ an interest, Lord John?” This personage, though undisturbed by the challenge, if such it was, referred it to Lord Theign. “Do you authorise me to speak--a little--as if I have an interest?” Lord Theign gave the appeal--and the speaker--a certain attention, and then appeared rather sharply to turn away from them. “My dear fellow, you may amuse yourself at my expense as you like!” “Oh, I don’t mean at your expense,” Lord John laughed-- “I mean at Mr. Bender’s!” “Well, go ahead, Lord John,” said that gentleman, always easy, but always too, as you would have felt, aware of everything-- “go ahead, but don’t sweetly hope to create me in any desire that doesn’t already exist in the germ. The attempt has often been made, over here--has in fact been organised on a considerable scale; but I guess I’ve got some peculiarity, for it doesn’t seem as if the thing could be done. If the germ is there, on the other hand,” Mr. Bender conceded, “it develops independently of all encouragement.” Lord John communicated again as in a particular sense with Lord Theign. “He thinks I really mean to _offer_ him something!” Lord Theign, who seemed to wish to advertise a degree of detachment from the issue, or from any other such, strolled off, in his restlessness, toward the door that opened to the terrace, only stopping on his way to light a cigarette from a matchbox on a small table. It was but after doing so that he made the remark: “Ah, Mr. Bender may easily be too much for you!” “That makes me the more sorry, sir,” said his visitor, “not to have been enough for _you!_” “I risk it, at any rate,” Lord John went on-- “I put you, Bender, the question of whether you wouldn’t Move,’ as you say, to acquire that Moretto.” Mr. Bender’s large face had a commensurate gaze. “As I say? I haven’t said anything of the sort!” “But you do ‘love’ you know,” Lord John slightly overgrimaced. “I don’t when I don’t want to. | his abundance, evoked as by a suggestive hand this contributory figure. “A young, spare, nervous gentleman with eye-glasses--I guess he’s an author. A friend of yours too?” he asked of Lord John. The answer was prompt and emphatic. “No, the gentleman is no friend at all of mine, Mr. Bender.” “A friend of my daughter’s,” Lord Theign easily explained. “I hope they’re looking after him.” “Oh, they took care he had tea and bread and butter to any extent; and were so good as to move something,” Mr. Bender conscientiously added, “so that he could get up on a chair and see straight into the Moretto.” This was a touch, however, that appeared to affect Lord John unfavourably. “Up on a chair? I say!” Mr. Bender took another view. “Why, I got right up myself--a little more and I’d almost have begun to paw it! He got me quite interested” --the proprietor of the picture would perhaps care to know-- “in that Moretto.” And it was on these lines that Mr. Bender continued to advance. “I take it that your biggest value, however, Lord Theign, is your splendid Sir Joshua. Our friend there has a great deal to say about that too--but it didn’t lead to our moving any more furniture.”<|quote|>On which he paused as to enjoy, with a show of his fine teeth, his host’s reassurance.</|quote|>“It _has_ yet, my impression of that picture, sir, led to something else. Are you prepared, Lord Theign, to entertain a proposition?” Lord Theign met Mr. Bender’s eyes while this inquirer left these few portentous words to speak for themselves. “To the effect that I part to you with ‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge’? No, Mr. Bender, such a proposition would leave me intensely cold.” Lord John had meanwhile had a more headlong cry. “My dear Bender, I _envy_ you!” “I guess you don’t envy me,” his friend serenely replied, “as much as I envy Lord Theign.” And then while Mr. Bender and the latter continued to face each other searchingly and firmly: “What I allude to is an overture of a strong and simple stamp--such as perhaps would shed a softer light on the difficulties raised by association and attachment. I’ve had some experience of first shocks, and I’d be glad to meet you as man to man.” Mr. Bender was, quite clearly, all genial and all sincere; he intended no irony and used, consciously, no great freedom. Lord Theign, not less evidently, saw this, and it permitted him amusement. “As rich man to poor man is how I’m to understand it? For me to meet _you_,” he added, “I should have to be tempted--and I’m not even temptable. So there we are,” he blandly smiled. His blandness appeared even for a moment to set an example to Lord John. “‘The Beautiful Duchess of Waterbridge,’ Mr. Bender, is a golden apple of one of those great family trees of which respectable people don’t lop off the branches whose venerable shade, in this garish and denuded age, they so much enjoy.” Mr. Bender looked at him as if he had cut some irrelevant caper. “Then if they don’t sell their ancestors where in the world are all the ancestors bought?” “Doesn’t it for the moment sufficiently answer your question,” Lord Theign asked, “that they’re definitely not bought at Dedborough?” “Why,” said Mr. Bender with a wealthy patience, “you talk as if it were my interest to be _reasonable_--which shows how little you understand. I’d be ashamed--with the lovely ideas I have--if I didn’t make you kick.” And his sturdy smile for it all fairly proclaimed his faith. “Well, I guess I can wait!” This again in turn visibly affected Lord John: marking the moment from which he, in spite of his cultivated levity, allowed an intenser and more sustained look to keep straying toward their host. “Mr. Bender’s bound to _have_ something!” It was even as if after a | The Outcry |
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