The Outcry | Page 8

clear even under the
heavy shade of a large hat surmounted with big black bows and
feathers. Her eyes had vaguely questioned those of her elder, who at
once replied to the gentleman forming the subject of their inquiry:
"Lady Grace must know." At this the young woman came forward, and
Lady Sandgate introduced the visitor. "My dear Grace, this is Mr.
Breckenridge Bender."
The younger daughter of the house might have arrived in preoccupation,
but she had urbanity to spare. "Of whom Lord John has told me," she
returned, "and whom I'm glad to see. Lord John," she explained to his
waiting friend, "is detained a moment in the park, open to-day to a big
Temperance school-feast, where our party is mostly gathered; so that if
you care to go out--!" She gave him in fine his choice.
But this was clearly a thing that, in the conditions, Mr. Bender wasn't
the man to take precipitately; though his big useful smile disguised his
prudence. "Are there any pictures in the park?"
Lady Grace's facial response represented less humour perhaps, but
more play. "We find our park itself rather a picture."
Mr. Bender's own levity at any rate persisted. "With a big Temperance

school-feast?"
"Mr. Bender's a great judge of pictures," Lady Sandgate said as to
forestall any impression of excessive freedom.
"Will there be more tea?" he pursued, almost presuming on this.
It showed Lady Grace for comparatively candid and literal. "Oh,
there'll be plenty of tea."
This appeared to determine Mr. Bender. "Well, Lady Grace, I'm after
pictures, but I take them 'neat.' May I go right round here?"
"Perhaps, love," Lady Sandgate at once said, "you'll let me show him."
"A moment, dear"--Lady Grace gently demurred. "Do go round," she
conformably added to Mr. Bender; "take your ease and your time.
Everything's open and visible, and, with our whole company dispersed,
you'll have the place to yourself."
He rose, in his genial mass, to the opportunity. "I'll be in clover--sure!"
But present to him was the richest corner of the pasture, which he could
fluently enough name. "And I'll find 'The Beautiful Duchess of
Waterbridge'?"
She indicated, off to the right, where a stately perspective opened, the
quarter of the saloon to which we have seen Mr. Banks retire. "At the
very end of those rooms."
He had wide eyes for the vista. "About thirty in a row, hey?" And he
was already off. "I'll work right through!"

III
Left with her friend, Lady Grace had a prompt question. "Lord John
warned me he was 'funny'--but you already know him?"

There might have been a sense of embarrassment in the way in which,
as to gain time, Lady Sandgate pointed, instead of answering, to the
small picture pronounced upon by Mr. Bender. "He thinks your little
Cuyp a fraud."
"That one?" Lady Grace could but stare. "The wretch!" However, she
made, without alarm, no more of it; she returned to her previous
question. "You've met him before?"
"Just a little--in town. Being 'after pictures'" Lady Sandgate explained,
"he has been after my great-grandmother."
"She," said Lady Grace with amusement, "must have found him funny!
But he can clearly take care of himself, while Kitty takes care of Lord
John, and while you, if you'll be so good, go back to support father--in
the hour of his triumph: which he wants you so much to witness that he
complains of your desertion and goes so far as to speak of you as
sneaking away."
Lady Sandgate, with a slight flush, turned it over. "I delight in his
triumph, and whatever I do is at least above board; but if it's a question
of support, aren't you yourself failing him quite as much?"
This had, however, no effect on the girl's confidence. "Ah, my dear, I'm
not at all the same thing, and as I'm the person in the world he least
misses--" Well, such a fact spoke for itself.
"You've been free to return and wait for Lord John?"--that was the
sense in which the elder woman appeared to prefer to understand it as
speaking.
The tone of it, none the less, led her companion immediately, though
very quietly, to correct her. "I've not come back to wait for Lord John."
"Then he hasn't told you--if you've talked--with what idea he has
come?"
Lady Grace had for a further correction the same shade of detachment.

"Kitty has told me--what it suits her to pretend to suppose."
"And Kitty's pretensions and suppositions always go with what
happens--at the moment, among all her wonderful happenings--to suit
her?"
Lady Grace let that question answer itself--she took the case up further
on. "What I can't make out is why this should so suit her!"
"And what I can't!" said Lady Sandgate without gross honesty