. So I reflected
that there would be almost nothing I mightn't with safety mention to my
present subject of practice as an acknowledgment that I was meddlesome.
I could put no clue in her hand that her notorious acuteness would make
of the smallest use to her. The most she could do would be to make it of
use to myself, and the clue it seemed best to select was therefore a
complete confession of guilt.

"You've a lucidity of your own in which I'm forced to recognise that the
highest purity of motive looks shrivelled and black. You bring out
accordingly what has made me thus beat about the bush. Have you really
such a fund of indulgence for Gilbert Long as we most of us, I
gather--though perhaps in our blindness--seem to see it stick out again
that he supposes? _May_ he fondly feel that he can continue to count on
it? Or, if you object to my question in that form, is it not, frankly,
to making his attitude--after all so thoroughly public--more convenient
to each of you that (without perhaps quite measuring what you're about,)
you've gone on sacrificing poor Briss? I call it sacrificing, you see,
in spite of there having been as yet no such great harm done. And if you
ask me again what business of mine such inquiries may represent, why,
the best thing will doubtless be to say to you that, with a smaller dose
of irrepressible irony in my composition than you have in yours, I can't
make so light as you of my tendency to worry on behalf of those I care
for. Let me finally hasten to add that I'm not now including in that
category either of the two gentlemen I've named."

I freely concede, as I continue my record, that to follow me at all, at
this point, gave proof on Lady John's part of a faculty that should have
prevented my thinking of her as inordinately backward. "Then who in the
world _are_ these objects of your solicitude?"

I showed, over and above my hesitation, my regret for the need of it.
"I'm afraid I can't tell you."

At this, not unnaturally, she fairly scoffed. "Asking me everything and
telling me nothing, you nevertheless look to me to satisfy you? Do you
mean," she pursued, "that you speak for persons whose interest is more
legitimately founded than the interest you so flatteringly attribute to
myself?"

"Well, yes--let them be so described! Can't you guess," I further
risked, "who constitutes at least _one_ of my preoccupations?"

The condescension of her consent to think marked itself handsomely
enoug