As Hugh recognised in this friend’s entrance and face the light of welcome he went, full of his subject, straight to their main affair. “I haven’t been able to wait, I’ve wanted so much to tell you — I mean how I’ve just come back from Brussels, where I saw Pappen-dick, who was free and ready, by the happiest chance, to start for Verona, which he must have reached some time yesterday.”

The girl’s responsive interest fairly broke into rapture. “Ah, the dear sweet thing!”

“Yes, he’s a brick — but the question now hangs in the balance. Allowing him time to have got into relation with the picture, I’ve begun to expect his wire, which will probably come to my club; but my fidget, while I wait, has driven me”— he threw out and dropped his arms in expression of his soft surrender —“well, just to do this: to come to you here, in my fever, at an unnatural hour and uninvited, and at least let you know I’ve ‘acted.’”

“Oh, but I simply rejoice,” Lady Grace declared, “to be acting with you.”

“Then if you are, if you are,” the young man cried, “why everything’s beautiful and right!”

“It’s all I care for and think of now,” she went on in her bright devotion, “and I’ve only wondered and hoped!”

Well, Hugh found for it all a rapid, abundant lucidity. “He was away from home at first, and I had to wait — but I crossed last week, found him and settled incoming home by Paris, where I had a grand four days’ jaw with the fellows there and saw their great specimen of our master: all of which has given him time.”

“And now his time’s up?” the girl eagerly asked.

“It must be-and we shall see.” But Hugh postponed that question to a matter of more moment still. “The thing is that at last I’m able to tell you how I feel the trouble I’ve brought you.”

It made her, quickly colouring, rest grave eyes on him. “What do you know — when I haven’t told you — about my ‘trouble’?”

“Can’t I have guessed, with a ray of intelligence?”— he had his answer ready. “You’ve sought asylum with this good friend from the effects of your father’s resentment.”

“‘Sought asylum’ is perhaps excessive,” Lady Grace returned —“though it wasn’t pleasant with him after that hour, no,” she allowed. “And I couldn’t go, you see, to Kitty.”

“No indeed, you couldn’t go to Kitty.” He smiled at her hard as he added: “I should have liked to see you go to Kitty! Therefore exactly is it that I’ve set you adrift — that I’ve darkened and poisoned your days. You’re paying with your comfort, with your peace, for having joined so gallantly in my grand remonstrance.”

She shook her head, turning from him, but then turned back again — as if accepting, as if even relieved by, this version of the prime cause of her state. “Why do you talk of it as ‘paying’— if it’s all to come back to my being paid? I mean by your blest success — if you really do what you want.”

“I have your word for it,” he searchingly said, “that our really pulling it off together will make up to you ——?”

“I should be ashamed if it didn’t, for everything!”— she took the question from his mouth. “I believe in such a cause exactly as you do — and found a lesson, at Dedborough, in your frankness and your faith.”

“Then you’ll help me no end,” he said all simply and sincerely.

“You’ve helped me already”— that she gave him straight back. And on it they stayed a moment, their strenuous faces more intensely communing.

“You’re very wonderful — for a girl!” Hugh brought out.

“One has to be a girl, naturally, to be a daughter of one’s house,” she laughed; “and that’s all I am of ours — but a true and a right and a straight one.”

He glowed with his admiration. “You’re splendid!”

That might be or not, her light shrug intimated; she gave it, at any rate, the go-by and more exactly stated her case. “I see our situation.”

“So do I, Lady Grace!” he cried with the strongest emphasis. “And your father only doesn’t.”

“Yes,” she said for intelligent correction —“he sees it, there’s nothing in life he sees so much. But unfortunately he sees it all wrong.”

Hugh seized her point of view as if there had been nothing of her that he wouldn’t have seized. “He sees it all wrong then! My appeal the other day he took as a rude protest. And any protest ——”

“Any protest,” she quickly and fully agreed, “he takes as an offence, yes. It’s his theory that he still has rights,” she smiled, “though he is a miserable peer.”

“How should he not have rights,” said Hugh, “when he has really everything on earth?”

“Ah, he doesn’t even know that — he takes it so much for granted.” And she sought, though as rather sadly and despairingly, to explain. “He lives all in his own world.”

“He lives all in his own, yes; but he does business all in ours — quite as much as the people who come up to the city in the Tube.” With which Hugh had a still sharper recall of the stiff actual. “And he must be here to do business today.”

“You know,” Lady Grace asked, “that he’s to meet Mr. Bender?”

“Lady Sandgate kindly warned me, and,” her companion saw as he glanced at the clock on the chimney, “I’ve only ten minutes, at best. The ‘Journal’ won’t have been good for him,” he added —“you doubtless have seen the ‘Journal’?”

“No”— she was vague. “We live by the ‘Morning Post.’”

“That’s why our friend here didn’t speak then,” Hugh said with a better light —“which, out of a dim consideration for her, I didn’t do, either. But they’ve a leader this morning about Lady Lappington and her Longhi, and on Bender and his hauls, and on the certainty — if we don’t do something energetic — of more and more Benders to come: such a conquering horde as invaded the old civilisation, only armed now with huge cheque-books instead of with spears and battle-axes. They refer to the rumour current — as too horrific to beli............