"Yes," the girl returned; "my father, in the act of despoiling us all, all who are interested, without apparently the least unpleasant consciousness, keeps the balance showily even, to his mostly so fine, so delicate sense, by suddenly discovering that he"s scandalised at my caring for your friendship."
Hugh looked at her, on this, as with the gladness verily of possession promised and only waiting--or as if from that moment forth he had her a.s.surance of everything that most concerned him and that might most inspire. "Well, isn"t the moral of it all simply that what his perversity of pride, as we can only hold it, will have most done for us is to bring us--and to keep us--blessedly together?"
She seemed for a moment to question his "simply." "Do you regard us as so much "together" when you remember where, in spite of everything, I"ve put myself?"
"By telling him to do what he likes?" he recalled without embarra.s.sment.
"Oh, that wasn"t in spite of "everything"--it was only in spite of the Manto-vano."
""Only"?" she flushed--"when I"ve given the picture up?"
"Ah," Hugh cried, "I don"t care a hang for the picture!" And then as she let him, closer, close to her with this, possess himself of her hands: "We both only care, don"t we, that we"re given to each other thus? We both only care, don"t we, that nothing can keep us apart?"
"Oh, if you"ve forgiven me--!" she sighed into his fond face.
"Why, since you gave the thing up _for_ me," he pleadingly laughed, "it isn"t as if you had given _me_ up----!"
"For anything, anything? Ah never, never!" she breathed.
"Then why aren"t we all right?"
"Well, if you will----!"
"Oh for ever and ever and ever!"--and with this ardent cry of his devotion his arms closed in their strength and she was clasped to his breast and to his lips.
The next moment, however, she had checked him with the warning "Amy Sandgate!"--as if she had heard their hostess enter the other room. Lady Sand-gate was in fact almost already upon them--their disjunction had scarce been effected and she had reached the nearer threshold. They had at once put the widest s.p.a.ce possible between them--a little of the flurry of which transaction agitated doubtless their clutch at composure. They gave back a shade awkwardly and consciously, on one side and the other, the speculative though gracious attention she for a few moments made them and their recent intimate relation the subject of; from all of which indeed Lady Grace sought and found cover in a prompt and responsible address to Hugh. "Mustn"t you go without more delay to Clifford Street?"
He came back to it all alert "At once!" He had recovered his hat and reached the other door, whence he gesticulated farewell to the elder lady. "Please pardon me"--and he disappeared.
Lady Sandgate hereupon stood for a little silently confronted with the girl. "Have you freedom of mind for the fact that your father"s suddenly at hand?"
"He has come back?"--Lady Grace was sharply struck.
"He arrives this afternoon and appears to go straight to Kitty--according to a wire that I find downstairs on coming back late from my luncheon. He has returned with a rush--as," said his correspondent in the elation of triumph, "I was _sure_ he would!"
Her young friend was more at sea. "Brought back, you mean, by the outcry--even though he so hates it?"
But she was more and more all lucidity--save in so far as she was now almost all authority. "Ah, hating still more to seem afraid, he has come back to face the music!"
Lady Grace, turning away as in vague despair for the manner in which the music might affect him, yet wheeled about again, after thought, to a positive recognition and even to quite an inconsequent pride.
"Yes--that"s dear old father!"
And what was Lady Sandgate moreover but mistress now of the subject?
"At the point the row has reached he couldn"t stand it another day; so he has thrown up his cure and--lest we should oppose him!--not even announced his start."
"Well," her companion returned, "now that I"ve _done_ it all I shall never oppose him again!"
Lady Sandgate appeared to show herself as still under the impression she might have received on entering. "He"ll only oppose _you!_"
"If he does," said Lady Grace, "we"re at present two to bear it."
"Heaven save us then"--the elder woman was quick, was even cordial, for the sense of this--"your good friend _is_ clever!"
Lady Grace honoured the remark. "Mr. Crim-ble"s remarkably clever."
"And you"ve arranged----?"
"We haven"t arranged--but we"ve understood. So that, dear Amy, if _you_ understand--!" Lady Grace paused, for Gotch had come in from the hall.
"His lordship has arrived?" his mistress immediately put to him.
"No, my lady, but Lord John has--to know if he"s expected _here_, and in that case, by your ladyship"s leave, to come up."
Her ladyship turned to the girl. "May Lord John--as we do await your father--come up?"
"As suits _you_, please!"
"He may come up," said Lady Sandgate to Gotch. "His lordship"s expected." She had a pause till they were alone again, when she went on to her companion: "You asked me just now if I understood. Well--I do understand!"
Lady Grace, with Gotch"s withdrawal, which left the door open, had reached the pa.s.sage to the other room. "Then you"ll excuse me!"--she made her escape.
II
Lord John, reannounced the next instant from the nearest quarter and quite waiving salutations, left no doubt of the high pitch of his eagerness and tension as soon as the door had closed behind him. "What on earth then do you suppose he has come back to _do_--?" To which he added while his hostess"s gesture impatiently disclaimed conjecture: "Because when a fellow really finds himself the centre of a cyclone----!"
"Isn"t it just at the centre," she interrupted, "that you keep remarkably still, and only in the suburbs that you feel the rage? I count on dear Theign"s doing nothing in the least foolish--!"
"Ah, but he can"t have chucked everything for nothing," Lord John sharply returned; "and wherever you place him in the rumpus he can"t not meet somehow, hang it, such an a.s.sault on his character as a great n.o.bleman and good citizen."
"It"s his luck to have become with the public of the newspapers the scapegoat-in-chief: for the sins, so-called, of a lot of people!" Lady Sandgate inconclusively sighed.
"Yes," Lord John concluded for her, "the mercenary millions on whose traffic in their trumpery values--when they"re so lucky as to have any!--_this_ isn"t a patch!"
"Oh, there are cases _and_ cases: situations and responsibilities so intensely differ!"--that appeared on the whole, for her ladyship, the moral to be gathered.
"Of course everything differs, all round, from everything," Lord John went on; "and who in the world knows anything of his own case but the victim of circ.u.mstances exposing himself, for the highest and purest motives, to be literally torn to pieces?"
"Well," said Lady Sandgate as, in her strained suspense, she freshly consulted her bracelet watch, "I hope he isn"t already torn--if you tell me you"ve been to Kitty"s."
"Oh, he was all right so far: he had arrived and gone out again," the young man explained, "as Lady Imber hadn"t been at home."
"Ah cool Kitty!" his hostess sighed again--but diverted, as she spoke, by the reappearance of her butler, this time positively preceding Lord Theign, whom she met, when he presently stood before her, his garb of travel exchanged for consummate afternoon dress, with yearning tenderness and compa.s.sionate curiosity. "At last, dearest friend--what a joy! But with Kitty not at home to receive you?"
That young woman"s parent made light of it for the indulged creature"s sake. "Oh I knew my Kitty! I dressed and I find her at five-thirty."
To which he added as he only took in further, without expression, Lord John: "But Bender, who came there before my arrival--he hasn"t tried for me here?"
It was a point on which Lord John himself could at least be expressive.