His temporary hostess, even with his eyes on her, appeared to decide after a moment not wholly to disown his thought. But she smiled for it. Well, in that set!
My mothers set? However, if she could smile he could laugh. Im much obliged!
Oh, she qualified, I dont criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house
Make ithe took her sense straight from herthe house in England where one feels most the false note of a dishevelled and bankrupt elder daughter breaking in with a list of her gaming debtsto say nothing of others!and wishing to have at least those wiped out in the interest of her reputation? Exactly so, he went on before she could meet it with a diplomatic ambiguity; and just that, I assure you, is a large part of the reason I like to come heresince I personally dont come with any such associations.
Not the association of bankruptcyno; as you represent the payee!
The young man appeared to regard this imputation for a moment almost as a liberty taken. How do you know so well, Lady Sandgate, what I represent?
She bethought herselfbut briefly and bravely. Well, dont you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Dont you represent the beliefvery natural, I grantthat more than one perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently with that, the hope of arranging with our admirable host here that he shall lend a helpful hand to your commending yourself to dear Grace?
Lord John might, in the light of these words, have felt any latent infirmity in such a pretension exposed; but as he stood there facing his chances he would have struck a spectator as resting firmly enough on some felt residuum of advantage: whether this were cleverness or luck, the strength of his backing or that of his sincerity. Even with the young woman to whom our friends reference thus broadened still a vague quantity for us, you would have taken his sincerity as quite possibleand this despite an odd element in him that you might have described as a certain delicacy of brutality. This younger son of a noble matron recognised even by himself as terrible enjoyed in no immediate or aggressive manner any imputable private heritage or privilege of arrogance. He would on the contrary have irradiated fineness if his lustre hadnt been a little prematurely dimmed. Active yet insubstantial, he was slight and short and a trifle too punctually, though not yet quite lamentably, bald. Delicacy was in the arch of his eyebrow, the finish of his facial line, the economy of treatment by which his negative nose had been enabled to look important and his meagre mouth to smile its spareness away.
He had pleasant but hard little eyesthey glittered, handsomely, without promiseand a neatness, a coolness and an ease, a clear instinct for making point take, on his behalf, the place of weight and immunity that of capacity, which represented somehow the art of living at a high pitch and yet at a low cost. There was that in his satisfied air which still suggested sharp wantsand this was withal the ambiguity; for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable.
May I ask what you mean, he inquired of Lady Sandgate, by the question of my arranging?
I mean that youre the very clever son of a very clever mother.
Oh, Im less clever than you think, he repliedif you really think it of me at all; and mammas a good sight cleverer!
Than I think? Lady Sandgate echoed. Why, shes the person in all our world I would gladly most resemblefor her general ability to put what she wants through. But she at once added: That is if! pausing on it with a smile.
If what then?
Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all in her kinds of cleverness without exceptionand to have them, said Lady Sandgate, to the very end.
He definitely, he almost contemptuously declined to follow her. The very end of what?
She took her choice as amid all the wonderful directions there might be, and then seemed both to risk and to reserve something. Say of her so wonderfully successful general career.
It doubtless, however, warranted him in appearing to cut insinuations short. When youre as clever as she youll be as good. To which he subjoined: You dont begin to have the opportunity of knowing how good she is. This pronouncement, to whatever comparative obscurity it might appear to relegate her, his interlocutress had to takehe was so prompt with a more explicit challenge. What is it exactly that you suppose yourself to know?
Lady Sandgate had after a moment, in her supreme good humour, decided to take everything. I always proceed on the assumption that I know everything, because that makes people tell me.
It wouldnt make we, he quite rang out, if I didnt want to! But as it happens, he allowed, theres a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theigns confidence.
She waited a little as for more. Is that your questionwhether I am?
No, but if you are youll the better answer it
She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. Were the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But Im happy to say thatfor my pleasure when Im really curiousthis doesnt close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.
Then I hope youve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it hes likely to listen to me.
Lady Sandgate measured her groundwhich scarce seemed extensive. The person he most listens to just nowand in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourselfis that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.
Lady Imbers here? Lord John alertly asked.
She arrived last night andas weve other visitorsseems to have set up a side-show in the garden.
Then shell draw of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister wont be in that case with her, the young man supposed.
Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may, said Lady Sandgate, but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.
Lord John figured it a moment. Lady Imberhe ironically enlarged the figurecan lead people away.
Oh, dear Grace, his companion returned, happens fortunately to be firm!
This seemed to strike him for a moment as equivocal. Not against me, howeveryou dont mean? You dont think she has a beastly prejudice?
Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what mayor what maynthave happened between you.
Well, I try to judgeand such candour as was possible to Lord John seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. But Im in fear of seeing her too much as I want to see her.
There was an appeal in it that Lady Sandgate might have been moved to meet Are you absolutely in earnest about her?