awing-room by
the door that opened at the right of that charming retreat as a person
coming in faced Bruton Street; and she met there at this moment Mr.
Gotch, her butler, who had just appeared in the much wider doorway
forming opposite the Bruton Street windows an apartment not less ample,
lighted from the back of the house and having its independent connection
with the upper floors and the lower. She showed surprise at not
immediately finding the visitor to whom she had been called.

"But Mr. Crimble------?"

"Here he is, my lady." And he made way for that gentleman, who
emerged from the back room; Gotch observing the propriety of a prompt
withdrawal.

"I went in for a minute, with your servant's permission," Hugh
explained, "to see your famous Lawrence--which is splendid; he was so
good as to arrange the light." The young man's dress was of a form less
relaxed than on the occasion of his visit to Dedborough; yet the soft
felt hat that he rather restlessly crumpled as he talked marked the
limit of his sacrifice to vain appearances.

Lady Sandgate was at once interested in the punctuality of his reported
act. "Gotch thinks as much of my grandmother as I do--and even seems to
have ended by taking her for his very own."

"One sees, unmistakably, from her beauty, that you at any rate are of
her line," Hugh allowed himself, not without confidence, the amusement
of replying; "and I must make sure of another look at her when I've a
good deal more time."

His hostess heard him as with a lapse of hope. "You hadn't then come
_for_ the poor dear?" And then as he obviously hadn't, but for something
quite else: "I thought, from so prompt an interest, that she might be
coveted--!" It dropped with a yearning sigh.

"You imagined me sent by some prowling collector?" Hugh asked. "Ah, I
shall never do their work--unless to betray them: _that_ I shouldn't in
the least mind!--and I'm here, frankly, at this early hour, to ask your
consent to my seeing Lady Grace a moment on a particular business, if
she can kindly give me time."

"You've known then of her being with me?"

"I've known of her coming to you straight on leaving Dedborough,"
he explained; "of her wishing not to go to her sister's, and of Lord
Theign's having proceeded, as they say, or being on the point of
proceeding, to some foreign part."

"And you've learnt it from having seen her--these three or four weeks?"

"I've met her--but just barely--two or three times