V
"Your friend seems remarkably hot!" Lord John remarked to his younghostess as soon as they had been left together.
"He has cycled twenty miles. And indeed," she smiled, "he does appear tocare for what he cares for!"
Her companion then, during a moment's silence, might have been notingthe emphasis of her assent. "Have you known him long?"
"No--not long."
"Nor seen him often?"
"Only once--till now."
"Oh!" said Lord John with another pause. But he soon proceeded. "Let usleave him then to cool! I haven't cycled twenty miles, but I've motoredforty very much in the hope of _this_, Lady Grace--the chance of beingable to assure you that I too care very much for what I care for." Towhich he added on an easier note, as to carry off a slight awkwardnesswhile she only waited: "You certainly mustn't let yourself--between usall--be worked to death."
"Oh, such days as this--I" She made light enough of her burden.
"They don't come often to _me_ at least, Lady Grace! I hadn't graspedin advance the scale of your fete," he went on; "but since I've thegreat luck to find you alone--!" He paused for breath, however, beforethe full sequence.
She helped him out as through common kindness, but it was a triflecolourless. "Alone or in company, Lord John, I'm always very glad to seeyou."
"Then that assurance helps me to wonder if you don't perhaps gentlyguess what it is I want to say." This time indeed she left him tohis wonder, so that he had to support himself. "I've tried, allconsiderately--these three months--to let you see for yourself howI feel. I feel very strongly, Lady Grace; so that at last"--and hisimpatient sincerity took after another instant the jump--"well, Iregularly worship you. You're my absolute ideal. I think of you thewhole time."
She measured out consideration as if it had been a yard of prettyribbon. "Are you sure you _know_ me enough?"
"I think I know a perfect woman when I see one!" Nothing now at leastcould have been more prompt, and while a decent pity for such a mistakeshowed in her smile he followed it up. "Isn't what you rather mean thatyou haven't cared sufficiently to know _me?_ If so, that can be littleby little mended, Lady Grace." He was in fact altogether gallant aboutit. "I'm aware of the limits of what I have to show or to offer, but Idefy you to find a limit to my possible devotion."
She deferred to that, but taking it in a lower key. "I believe you'd bevery good to me."
"Well, isn't _that_ something to start with?"--he fairly pounced on it."I'll do any blest thing in life you like, I'll accept any condition youimpose, if you'll only tell me you see your way."
"Shouldn't I have a little more first to see yours?" she asked. "Whenyou say you'll do anything in life I like, isn't there anything youyourself want strongly enough to do?"
He cast a stare about on the suggestions of the scene. "Anything thatwill make money, you mean?"
"Make money or make reputation--or even just make the time pass."
"Oh, what I have to look to in the way of a career?" If that was hermeaning he could show after an instant that he didn't fear it. "Well,your father, dear delightful man, has been so good as to give me tounderstand that he backs me for a decent deserving creature; and I'venoticed, as you doubtless yourself have, that when Lord Theign backs afellow----!"
He left the obvious moral for her to take up--which she did, but allinterrogatively. "The fellow at once comes in for something awfullygood?"
"I don't in the least mind your laughing at me," Lord John returned,"for when I put him the question of the lift he'd give me by speakingto you first he bade me simply remember the complete personal liberty inwhich he leaves you, and yet which doesn't come--take my word!" said theyoung man sagely--"from his being at all indifferent."
"No," she answered--"father isn't indifferent. But father's 'great'"
"Great indeed!"--her friend took it as with full comprehension. Thisappeared not to prevent, however, a second and more anxious thought."Too great for _you?_"
"Well, he makes me feel--even as his daughter--my extreme comparativesmallness."
It was easy, Lord John indicated, to see what she meant "He's a _grandseigneur_, and a serious one--that's what he is: the very type and modelof it, down to the ground. So you can imagine," the young man said,"what he makes me feel--most of all when he's so awfully good-naturedto me. His being as 'great' as you say and yet backing me--such as Iam!--doesn't _that_ strike you as a good note for me, the best you couldpossibly require? For he really _would_ like what I propose to you."
She might have been noting, while she thought, that he had risen toingenuity, to fineness, on the wings of his argument; under the effectof which her reply had the air of a concession. "Yes--he would like it."
"Then he _has_ spoken to you?" her suitor eagerly asked.
"He hasn't needed--he has ways of letting one know."
"Yes, yes, he has ways; all his own--like everything else he has. He'swonderful."
She fully agreed. "He's wonderful."
The tone of it appeared somehow to shorten at once for Lord John therest of his approach to a conclusion. "So you do see your way?"
"Ah--!" she said with a quick sad shrinkage.
"I mean," her visitor hastened to explain, "if he does put it to you asthe very best idea he has for you. When he does that--as I believe himready to do--will you really and fairly listen to him? I'm certain,honestly, that when you know me better--!" His confidence in shortdonned a bravery.
"I've been feeling this quarter of an hour," the girl returned, "that Ido know you better."
"Then isn't that all I want?--unless indeed I ought perhaps to askrather if it isn't all _you_ do! At any rate," said Lord John, "I maysee you again here?"
She waited a moment. "You must have patience with me."
"I _am_ having it But _after_ your father's appeal."
"Well," she said, "that must come first."
"Then you won't dodge it?"
She looked at him straight "I don't dodge, Lord John."
He admired the manner of it "You look awfully handsome as you sayso--and you see what _that_ does to me." As to attentuate a little thefreedom of which he went on: "May I fondly hope that if Lady Imber tooshould wish to put in another word for me----?"
"Will I listen to her?"--it brought Lady Grace straight down. "No, LordJohn, let me tell you at once that I'll do nothing of the sort Kitty'squite another affair, and I never listen to her a bit more than I canhelp."
Lord John appeared to feel, on this, that he mustn't too easily, inhonour, abandon a person who had presented herself to him as an ally."Ah, you strike me as a little hard on her. Your father himself--in hislooser moments!--takes pleasure in what she says."
Our young woman's eyes, as they rested on him after this remark, hadno mercy for its extreme feebleness. "If you mean that she's the mostreckless rattle one knows, and that she never looks so beautiful as whenshe's at her worst, and that, always clever for where she makes out herinterest, she has learnt to 'get round' him till he only sees throughher eyes--if you mean _that_ I understand you perfectly. But even if youthink me horrid for reflecting so on my nearest and dearest, it's not onthe side on which he has most confidence in his elder daughter that hisyoungest is moved to have most confidence in _him_."
Lord John stared as if she had shaken some odd bright flutteringobject in his face; but then recovering himself: "He hasn't perhaps anabsolutely 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 helikes you as much as you doubtless very justly feel, it won't be becauseyou are right about your being nice, but because _he_ is!"
"You mean that if I were wrong about it he would still insist that heisn't?"
Lady Grace was indeed sure. "Absolutely--if he had begun so! He began sowith 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 girlundisguisedly 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 goodfaith; "but I want you to understand that I don't care in the least whatit 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 thatthey had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence ofa third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach tothem was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for anotherquestion. "Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good hethinks 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 theperson by whom they were now joined. "Lord John desires you should tellme, 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 goback and deal with those overwhelming children."
"Ah, they don't overwhelm _you_, father!"--the girl put it with somepoint.
"If you mean to say I overwhelmed _them_, I dare say I did," hereplied--"from my view of that vast collective gape of six hundredpainfully plain and perfectly expressionless faces. But that was onlyfor the time: I pumped advice--oh _such_ advice!--and they held thelarge bucket as still as my pet pointer, when I scratch him, holds hisback. The bucket, under the stream--"
"Was bound to overflow?" Lady Grace suggested.
"Well, the strong recoil of the wave of intelligence has been notunnaturally followed by the formidable break. You must really," LordTheign insisted, "go and deal with it."
His daughter's smile, for all this, was perceptibly cold. "You workpeople up, father, and then leave others to let them down."
"The two things," he promptly replied, "require different natures." Towhich he simply added, as with the habit of authority, though not ofharshness, "Go!"
It was absolute and she yielded; only pausing an instant to look as witha certain gathered meaning from one of the men to the other. Faintly andresignedly sighing she passed away to the terrace and disappeared.
"The nature that _can_ let you down--I rather like it, you know!" LordJohn threw off. Which, for an airy elegance in them, were perhaps justslightly rash words--his companion gave him so sharp a look as the twowere left together.