LADY SANDGATE, on a morning late in May, entered her drawing-room by the door that opened at the right of that charming retreat as a person coming in faced Bruton Street; and she met there at this moment Mr.
Gotch, her butler, who had just appeared in the much wider doorway forming opposite the Bruton Street windows an apartment not less ample, lighted from the back of the house and having its independent connection with the upper floors and the lower. She showed surprise at not immediately finding the visitor to whom she had been called.
"But Mr. Crimble------?"
"Here he is, my lady." And he made way for that gentleman, who emerged from the back room; Gotch observing the propriety of a prompt withdrawal.
"I went in for a minute, with your servant"s permission," Hugh explained, "to see your famous Lawrence--which is splendid; he was so good as to arrange the light." The young man"s dress was of a form less relaxed than on the occasion of his visit to Dedborough; yet the soft felt hat that he rather restlessly crumpled as he talked marked the limit of his sacrifice to vain appearances.
Lady Sandgate was at once interested in the punctuality of his reported act. "Gotch thinks as much of my grandmother as I do--and even seems to have ended by taking her for his very own."
"One sees, unmistakably, from her beauty, that you at any rate are of her line," Hugh allowed himself, not without confidence, the amus.e.m.e.nt of replying; "and I must make sure of another look at her when I"ve a good deal more time."
His hostess heard him as with a lapse of hope. "You hadn"t then come _for_ the poor dear?" And then as he obviously hadn"t, but for something quite else: "I thought, from so prompt an interest, that she might be coveted--!" It dropped with a yearning sigh.
"You imagined me sent by some prowling collector?" Hugh asked. "Ah, I shall never do their work--unless to betray them: _that_ I shouldn"t in the least mind!--and I"m here, frankly, at this early hour, to ask your consent to my seeing Lady Grace a moment on a particular business, if she can kindly give me time."
"You"ve known then of her being with me?"
"I"ve known of her coming to you straight on leaving Dedborough,"
he explained; "of her wishing not to go to her sister"s, and of Lord Theign"s having proceeded, as they say, or being on the point of proceeding, to some foreign part."
"And you"ve learnt it from having seen her--these three or four weeks?"
"I"ve met her--but just barely--two or three times: at a "private view"
at the opera, in the lobby, and that sort of thing. But she hasn"t told you?"
Lady Sandgate neither affirmed nor denied; she only turned on him her thick l.u.s.tre. "I wanted to see how much _you"d_ tell." She waited even as for more, but this not coming she helped herself. "Once again at dinner?"
"Yes, but alas not near her!"
"Once then at a private view?--when, with the squash they usually are, you might have been very near her indeed!"
The young man, his hilarity quickened, took but a moment for the truth.
"Yes--it _was_ a squash!"
"And once," his hostess pursued, "in the lobby of the opera?"
"After "Tristan"--yes; but with some awful grand people I didn"t know."
She recognised; she estimated the grandeur. "Oh, the Pennimans are n.o.body! But now," she asked, "you"ve come, you say, on "business"?"
"Very important, please--which accounts for the hour I"ve ventured and the appearance I present."
"I don"t ask you too much to "account,"" Lady Sandgate kindly said; "but I can"t not wonder if she hasn"t told you what things have happened."
He cast about. "She has had no chance to tell me anything--beyond the fact of her being here."
"Without the reason?"
""The reason"?" he echoed.
She gave it up, going straighter. "She"s with me then as an old firm friend. Under my care and protection."
"I see"--he took it, with more penetration than enthusiasm, as a hint in respect to himself. "She puts you on your guard."
Lady Sandgate expressed it more graciously. "She puts me on my honour--or at least her father does."
"As to her seeing _me_"
"As to _my_ seeing at least--what may happen to her."
"Because--you say--things _have_ happened?"
His companion fairly sounded him. "You"ve only talked--when you"ve met--of "art"?"
"Well," he smiled, ""art is long"!"
"Then I hope it may see you through! But you should know first that Lord Theign is presently due--"
"_Here_, back already from abroad?"--he was all alert.
"He has not yet gone--he comes up this morning to start."
"And stops here on his way?"
"To take the _train de luxe_ this afternoon to his annual Salsomaggiore.
But with so little time to spare," she went on rea.s.suringly, "that, to simplify--as he wired me an hour ago from Dedborough--he has given rendezvous here to Mr. Bender, who is particularly to wait for him."
"And who may therefore arrive at any moment?"
She looked at her bracelet watch. "Scarcely before noon. So you"ll just have your chance--"
"Thank the powers then!"--Hugh grasped at it. "I shall have it best if you"ll be so good as to tell me first--well," he faltered, "what it is that, to my great disquiet, you"ve further alluded to; what it is that has occurred."
Lady Sandgate took her time, but her good-nature and other sentiments p.r.o.nounced. "Haven"t you at least guessed that she has fallen under her father"s extreme reprobation?"
"Yes, so much as that--that she must have greatly annoyed him--I have been supposing. But isn"t it by her having asked me to act for her? I mean about the Mantovano--which I _have_ done."
Lady Sandgate wondered. "You"ve "acted"?"
"It"s what I"ve come to tell her at last--and I"m all impatience."
"I see, I see"--she had caught a clue. "He hated that--yes; but you haven"t really made out," she put to him, "the _other_ effect of your hour at Dedborough?" She recognised, however, while she spoke, that his divination had failed, and she didn"t trouble him to confess it.
"Directly you had gone she "turned down" Lord John. Declined, I mean, the offer of his hand in marriage."
Hugh was clearly as much mystified as anything else. "He proposed there--?"
"He had spoken, that day, _before_--before your talk with Lord Theign, who had every confidence in her accepting him. But you came, Mr.