The Outcry | Page 2

the image itself appeared in some degree to prompt this particular edified friend to look at his watch and consider. "I should like to come in for the grand finale, but I rattled over in a great measure to meet a party, as he calls himself--and calls, if you please, even me!--who's motoring down by appointment and whom I think I should be here to receive; as well as a little, I confess, in the hope of a glimpse of Lady Grace: if you can perhaps imagine that!"
"I can imagine it perfectly," said Lady Sandgate, whom evidently no perceptions of that general order ever cost a strain. "It quite sticks out of you, and every one moreover has for some time past been waiting to see. But you haven't then," she added, "come from town?"
"No, I'm for three days at Chanter with my mother; whom, as she kindly lent me her car, I should have rather liked to bring."
Lady Sandgate left the unsaid, in this connection, languish no longer than was decent. "But whom you doubtless had to leave, by her preference, just settling down to bridge."
"Oh, to sit down would imply that my mother at some moment of the day gets up----!"
"Which the Duchess never does?"--Lady Sand-gate only asked to be allowed to show how she saw it. "She fights to the last, invincible; gathering in the spoils and only routing her friends?" She abounded genially in her privileged vision. "Ah yes--we know something of that!"
Lord John, who was a young man of a rambling but not of an idle eye, fixed her an instant with a surprise that was yet not steeped in compassion. "You too then?"
She wouldn't, however, too meanly narrow it down. "Well, in this house generally; where I'm so often made welcome, you see, and where----"
"Where," he broke in at once, "your jolly good footing quite sticks out of you, perhaps you'll let me say!"
She clearly didn't mind his seeing her ask herself how she should deal with so much rather juvenile intelligence; and indeed she could only decide to deal quite simply. "You can't say more than I feel--and am proud to feel!--at being of comfort when they're worried."
This but fed the light flame of his easy perception--which lighted for him, if she would, all the facts equally. "And they're worried now, you imply, because my terrible mother is capable of heavy gains and of making a great noise if she isn't paid? I ought to mind speaking of that truth," he went on as with a practised glance in the direction of delicacy; "but I think I should like you to know that I myself am not a bit ignorant of why it has made such an impression here."
Lady Sandgate forestalled his knowledge. "Because poor Kitty Imber--who should either never touch a card or else learn to suffer in silence, as I've had to, goodness knows!--has thrown herself, with her impossible big debt, upon her father? whom she thinks herself entitled to 'look to' even more as a lovely young widow with a good jointure than she formerly did as the mere most beautiful daughter at home."
She had put the picture a shade interrogatively, but this was as nothing to the note of free inquiry in Lord John's reply. "You mean that our lovely young widows--to say nothing of lovely young wives--ought by this time to have made out, in predicaments, how to turn round?"
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 mother's set?" However, if she could smile he could laugh. "I'm much obliged!"
"Oh," she qualified, "I don't criticise her Grace; but the ways and traditions and tone of this house----"
"Make it"--he took her sense straight from her--"the 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 debts--to 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 here--since I personally don't come with any such associations."
"Not the association of bankruptcy--no; 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 herself--but briefly and bravely. "Well, don't you represent, by your own admission, certain fond aspirations? Don't you represent the belief--very natural, I grant--that more than one perverse and extravagant flower will be unlikely on such a fine healthy old stem; and, consistently