The Outcry | Page 4

things."
"Then I hope you've ground for believing that if I go the right way
about it he's likely to listen to me."
Lady Sandgate measured her ground--which scarce seemed extensive.
"The person he most listens to just now--and in fact at any time, as you
must have seen for yourself--is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful
wheedler, his elder daughter."
"Lady Imber's here?" Lord John alertly asked.
"She arrived last night and--as we've other visitors--seems to have set

up a side-show in the garden."
"Then she'll 'draw' of course immensely, as she always does. But her
sister won't 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 Imber"--he ironically enlarged
the figure--"can 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,
however--you don't mean? You don't think she has a beastly
prejudice----?"
"Surely you can judge about it; as knowing best what may--or what
mayn't--have happened between you."
"Well, I try to judge"--and such candour as was possible to Lord John
seemed to sit for a moment on his brow. "But I'm 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?"
"Of course I am--why shouldn't I be? But," he said with impatience, "I
want help."
"Very well then, that's what Lady Imber's giving you." And as it
appeared to take him time to read into these words their full sense, she
produced others, and so far did help him--though the effort was in a
degree that of her exhibiting with some complacency her own
unassisted control of stray signs and shy lights. "By telling her, by
bringing it home to her, that if she'll make up her mind to accept you

the Duchess will do the handsome thing. Handsome, I mean, by Kitty."
Lord John, appropriating for his convenience the truth in this, yet
regarded it as open to a becoming, an improving touch from himself.
"Well, and by me." To which he added with more of a challenge in it:
"But you really know what my mother will do?"
"By my system," Lady Sandgate smiled, "you see I've guessed. What
your mother will do is what brought you over!"
"Well, it's that," he allowed--"and something else."
"Something else?" she derisively echoed. "I should think 'that,' for an
ardent lover, would have been enough."
"Ah, but it's all one Job! I mean it's one idea," he hastened to
explain--"if you think Lady Imber's really acting on her."
"Mightn't you go and see?"
"I would in a moment if I hadn't to look out for another matter too."
And he renewed his attention to his watch. "I mean getting straight at
my American, the party I just mentioned------"
But she had already taken him up. "You too have an American and a
'party,' and yours also motors down----?"
"Mr. Breckenridge Bender." Lord John named him with a shade of
elation.
She gaped at the fuller light "You know my Breckenridge?--who I
hoped was coming for me!"
Lord John as freely, but more gaily, wondered. "Had he told you so?"
She held out, opened, the telegram she had kept folded in her hand
since her entrance. "He has sent me that--which, delivered to me ten
minutes ago out there, has brought me in to receive him."

The young man read out this missive. "'Failing to find you in Bruton
Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.'" It did
involve an ambiguity. "Why, he has been engaged these three days to
coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my
business."
Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich
scene. "Then why does he say it's me he's pursuing?"
He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced
monopoly. "My dear lady, he's pursuing expensive works of art."
"By which you imply that I'm one?" She might have been wound up by
her disappointment to almost any irony.
"I imply--or rather I affirm--that every handsome woman is! But what
he arranged with me about," Lord John explained, "was that he should
see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in
particular--of which he had heard so much and to which I've been thus
glad to assist him."
This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened