efore noon. So you'll just
have your chance--"

"Thank the powers then!"--Hugh grasped at it. "I shall have it best if
you'll be so good as to tell me first--well," he faltered, "what it is
that, to my great disquiet, you've further alluded to; what it is that
has occurred."

Lady Sandgate took her time, but her good-nature and other sentiments
pronounced. "Haven't you at least guessed that she has fallen under her
father's extreme reprobation?"

"Yes, so much as that--that she must have greatly annoyed him--I have
been supposing. But isn't it by her having asked me to act for her? I
mean about the Mantovano--which I _have_ done."

Lady Sandgate wondered. "You've 'acted'?"

"It's what I've come to tell her at last--and I'm all impatience."

"I see, I see"--she had caught a clue. "He hated that--yes; but you
haven't really made out," she put to him, "the _other_ effect of your
hour at Dedborough?" She recognised, however, while she spoke, that
his divination had failed, and she didn't trouble him to confess it.
"Directly you had gone she 'turned down' Lord John. Declined, I mean,
the offer of his hand in marriage."

Hugh was clearly as much mystified as anything else. "He proposed
there--?"

"He had spoken, that day, _before_--before your talk with Lord Theign,
who had every confidence in her accepting him. But you came, Mr.
Crimble, you went; and when her suitor reappeared, just after you _had_
gone, for his answer--"

"She wouldn't have him?" Hugh asked with a precipitation of interest.

But Lady Sandgate could humour almost any curiosity. "She wouldn't look
at him."

He bethought himself. "But had she said she would?"

"So her father indignantly considers."

"That's the _ground_ of his indignation?"

"He had his reasons for counting on her, and it has determined a painful
crisis."

Hugh Crimble turned this over--feeling apparently for something he
didn't find. "I'm sorry to hear such things, but where's the connection
with me?"

"Ah, you know best yourself, and if you don't see any---!" In that case,
Lady Sandgate's motion implied, she washed her hands of it.

Hugh had for a moment the air of a young man treated to the sweet chance
to guess a conundrum--which he gave up. "I really don't see any, Lady
Sandgate. But," he a little inconsistently said, "I'm greatly obliged to
you for telling me."

"Don't mention it!--though I think it _is_ good of me," she smiled, "on
so short an acquaintance." To