ve 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 eve