u, and who are as good people, and
as pleasant and as clever, damn it, when all's said and done, as any
others that are likely to come your way." It clearly did his lordship
good to work out thus his case, which grew more and more coherent to
him and glowed with irresistible colour. "Letting alone gallant John
himself, most amiable of men, about whose merits and whose claims you
appear to have pretended to agree with me just that you might, when he
presumed, poor chap, ardently to urge them, deal him with the more cruel
effect that calculated blow on the mouth!"

It was clear that in the girl's great gravity embarrassment had no
share. "They so come down on you I understand then, father, that you're
obliged to come down on _me?_"

"Assuredly--for some better satisfaction than your just moping here
without a sign!"

"But a sign of what, father?" she asked--as helpless as a lone islander
scanning the horizon for a sail.

"Of your appreciating, of your in some degree dutifully considering, the
predicament into which you've put me!"

"Hasn't it occurred to you in the least that you've rather put _me_ into
one?"

He threw back his head as from exasperated nerves. "I put you certainly
in the predicament of your receiving by my care a handsome settlement
in life--which all the elements that would make for your enjoying it
had every appearance of successfully commending to you." The perfect
readiness of which on his lips had, like a higher wave, the virtue
of lifting and dropping him to still more tangible ground. "And if I
understand you aright as wishing to know whether I apologise for that
zeal, why you take a most preposterous view of our relation as father
and daughter."

"You understand me no better than I fear I understand you," Lady Grace
returned, "if what you expect of me is really to take back my words to
Lord John." And then as he didn't answer, while their breach gaped like
a jostled wound, "Have you seriously come to propose--and from _him_
again," she added--"that I shall reconsider my resolute act and lend
myself to your beautiful arrangement?"

It had so the sound of unmixed ridicule that he could only, for his
dignity, not give way to passion. "I've come, above all, for _this_, I
may say, Grace: to remind you of whom you're addressing when you jibe at
me, and to make of you assuredly a plain demand--exactly as to whether
you judged us to have actively _incurred_ your treatment of our unhappy
friend,