ess or tact--and I'm afraid that, as I hadn't been the least in
love with him even before, he did have to take the consequence."

Lord Theign, with an elated swing of his person, greeted this as all
he could possibly want. "You recognise then that your reception of him
_was_ purely vindictive!--the meaning of which is that unless my conduct
of my private interests, of which you know nothing whatever, happens to
square with your superior wisdom you'll put me under boycott all round!
While you chatter about mistakes and blunders, and about our charming
friend's lack of the discretion of which you yourself set so grand an
example, what account have you to offer of the scene you made me
there before that fellow--your confederate, as he had all the air of
being!--by giving it me with such effrontery that, if I had eminently
done with him after his remarkable display, you at least were but the
more determined to see him keep it up?"

The girl's justification, clearly, was very present to her, and not
less obviously the truth that to make it strong she must, avoiding every
side-issue, keep it very simple, "The only account I can give you, I
think, is that I could but speak at such a moment as I felt, and that I
felt--well, how can I say how deeply? If you can really bear to know,
I feel so still I care in fact more than ever that we shouldn't do such
things. I care, if you like, to indiscretion--I care, if you like, to
offence, to arrogance, to folly. But even as my last word to you before
you leave England on the conclusion of such a step, I'm ready to cry out
to you that you oughtn't, you oughtn't, you oughtn't!"

Her father, with wonder-moved, elevated brows and high commanding hand,
checked her as in an act really of violence--save that, like an inflamed
young priestess, she had already, in essence, delivered her message.
"Hallo, hallo, hallo, my distracted daughter--no 'crying out,' if you
please!" After which, while arrested but unabashed, she still kept her
lighted eyes on him, he gave back her conscious stare for a minute,
inwardly and rapidly turning things over, making connections, taking,
as after some long and lamentable lapse of observation, a new strange
measure of her: all to the upshot of his then speaking with a difference
of tone, a recognition of still more of the odious than he had supposed,
so that the case might really call for some coolness. "You keep bad
company, Grace--it pays the devil with your sens