"And now his time"s up?" the girl eagerly asked.
"It _must_ be--and we shall see." But Hugh postponed that question to a matter of more moment still. "The thing is that at last I"m able to tell you how I feel the trouble I"ve brought you."
It made her, quickly colouring, rest grave eyes on him. "What do you know--when I haven"t told you--about my "trouble"?"
"Can"t I have guessed, with a ray of intelligence?"--he had his answer ready. "You"ve sought asylum with this good friend from the effects of your father"s resentment."
""Sought asylum" is perhaps excessive," Lady Grace returned--"though it wasn"t pleasant with him after that hour, no," she allowed. "And I couldn"t go, you see, to Kitty."
"No indeed, you couldn"t go to Kitty." He smiled at her hard as he added: "I should have liked to see you go to Kitty! Therefore exactly is it that I"ve set you adrift--that I"ve darkened and poisoned your days.
You"re paying with your comfort, with your peace, for having joined so gallantly in my grand remonstrance."
She shook her head, turning from him, but then turned back again--as if accepting, as if even relieved by, this version of the prime cause of her state. "Why do you talk of it as "paying"--if it"s all to come back to my _being_ paid? I mean by your blest success--if you really do what you want."
"I have your word for it," he searchingly said, "that our really pulling it off together will make up to you----?"
"I should be ashamed if it didn"t, for everything!"--she took the question from his mouth. "I believe in such a cause exactly as you do--and found a lesson, at Dedborough, in your frankness and your faith."
"Then you"ll help me no end," he said all simply and sincerely.
"You"ve helped _me_ already"--that she gave him straight back. And on it they stayed a moment, their strenuous faces more intensely communing.
"You"re very wonderful--for a girl!" Hugh brought out.
"One _has_ to be a girl, naturally, to be a daughter of one"s house,"
she laughed; "and that"s all I am of ours--but a true and a right and a straight one."
He glowed with his admiration. "You"re splendid!"
That might be or not, her light shrug intimated; she gave it, at any rate, the go-by and more exactly stated her case. "I see our situation."
"So do I, Lady Grace!" he cried with the strongest emphasis. "And your father only doesn"t."
"Yes," she said for intelligent correction--"he sees it, there"s nothing in life he sees so much. But unfortunately he sees it all wrong."
Hugh seized her point of view as if there had been nothing of her that he wouldn"t have seized. "He sees it all wrong then! My appeal the other day he took as a rude protest. And any protest----"
"Any protest," she quickly and fully agreed, "he takes as an offence, yes. It"s his theory that he still has rights," she smiled, "though he _is_ a miserable peer."
"How should he not have rights," said Hugh, "when he has really everything on earth?"
"Ah, he doesn"t even _know_ that--he takes it so much for granted." And she sought, though as rather sadly and despairingly, to explain. "He lives all in his own world."
"He lives all in his own, yes; but he does business all in ours--quite as much as the people who come up to the city in the Tube." With which Hugh had a still sharper recall of the stiff actual. "And he must be here to do business to-day."
"You know," Lady Grace asked, "that he"s to meet Mr. Bender?"
"Lady Sandgate kindly warned me, and," her companion saw as he glanced at the clock on the chimney, "I"ve only ten minutes, at best. The "Journal" won"t have been good for him," he added--"you doubtless have seen the "Journal"?"
"No"--she was vague. "We live by the "Morning Post.""
"That"s why our friend here didn"t speak then," Hugh said with a better light--"which, out of a dim consideration for her, I didn"t do, either.
But they"ve a leader this morning about Lady Lappington and her Longhi, and on Bender and his hauls, and on the certainty--if we don"t do something energetic--of more and more Benders to come: such a conquering horde as invaded the old civilisation, only armed now with huge cheque-books instead of with spears and battle-axes. They refer to the rumour current--as too horrific to believe--of Lord Theign"s putting up his Moretto; with the question of how properly to qualify any such sad purpose in him should the further report prove true of a new and momentous opinion about the picture entertained by several eminent authorities."
"Of whom," said the girl, intensely attached to this recital, "you"re of course seen as not the least."
"Of whom, of course, Lady Grace, I"m as yet--however I"m "seen"--the whole collection. But we"ve time"--he rested on that "The fat, if you"ll allow me the expression, is on the fire--which, as I see the matter, is where this particular fat _should_ be."
"Is the article, then," his companion appealed, "very severe?"
"I prefer to call it very enlightened and very intelligent--and the great thing is that it immensely "marks," as they say. It will have made a big public difference--from this day; though it"s of course aimed not so much at persons as at conditions; which it calls upon us all somehow to tackle."
"Exactly"--she was full of the saving vision; "but as the conditions are directly embodied in persons----"
"Oh, of course it here and there bells the cat; which means that it bells three or four."
"Yes," she richly brooded--"Lady Lappington _is_ a cat!"
"She will have been "belled," at any rate, with your father," Hugh amusedly went on, "to the certainty of a row; and a row can only be good for us--I mean for _us_ in particular." Yet he had to bethink himself.
"The case depends a good deal of course on how your father _takes_ such a resounding rap."
"Oh, I know how he"ll take it!"--her perception went all the way.
"In the very highest and properest spirit?"
"Well, you"ll see." She was as brave as she was clear. "Or at least I shall!"
Struck with all this in her he renewed his homage. "You _are_, yes, splendid!"
"I even," she laughed, "surprise myself."
But he was already back at his calculations. "How early do the papers get to you?"
"At Dedborough? Oh, quite for breakfast--which isn"t, however, very early."
"Then that"s what has caused his wire to Bender."
"But how will such talk strike _him_?" the girl asked.
Hugh meanwhile, visibly, had not only followed his train of thought, he had let it lead him to certainty. "It will have moved Mr. Bender to absolute rapture."
"Rather," Lady Grace wondered, "than have put him off?"
"It will have put him prodigiously _on!_ Mr. Bender--as he said to me at Dedborough of his n.o.ble host there," Hugh pursued--"is "a very nice man"; but he"s a product of the world of advertisment, and advertis.e.m.e.nt is all he sees and aims at. He lives in it as a saint in glory or a fish in water."
She took it from him as half doubting. "But mayn"t advertis.e.m.e.nt, in so special a case, turn, on the whole, against him?"
Hugh shook a negative forefinger with an expression he might have caught from foreign comrades. "He rides the biggest whirlwind--he has got it saddled and bitted."