a bearing on the so extraordinary appearance of your intimacy
with him!"

"You mean that if he _should_ be--what you ask me about--your exaction
would then be modified?"

"My request that you break it short off? That request would, on the
contrary," Lord Theign pronounced, "rest on an immense new ground.
Therefore I insist on your telling me the truth."

"Won't the truth be before you, father, if you'll _think_ a
moment--without extravagance?" After which, while, as stiffly as
ever--and it probably seemed to her impatience as stupidly--he didn't
rise to it, she went on: "If I _offered_ you not again to see him, does
that make for you the appearance--?"

"If you offered it, you mean, on your condition--my promising not to
sell? I promised," said Lord Theign, "absolutely nothing at all!"

She took him up with all expression. "So I promised as little! But
that I should have been able to say what I did sufficiently meets your
curiosity."

She might, wronged as she held herself, have felt him stupid not to see
_how_ wronged; but he was in any case acute for an evasion. "You risked
your offer for the great equivalent over which you've so wildly worked
yourself up."

"Yes, I've worked myself--that, I grant you and don't blush for! But
hardly so much as to renounce my 'lover'--if," she prodigiously smiled,
"I were so fortunate as to have one!"

"You renounced poor John mightily easily--whom you were so fortunate as
to have!"

Her brows rose as high as his own had ever done. "Do you call Lord John
my lover?"

"He was your suitor most assuredly," Lord Theign inimitably said,
though without looking at her; "and as strikingly encouraged as he was
respectfully ardent!"

"Encouraged by _you_, dear father, beyond doubt!"

"Encouraged--er--by every one: because you were (yes, you _were!_)
encouraging. And what I ask of you now is a word of common candour as
to whether you didn't, on your honour, turn him off because of your just
then so stimulated views on the person who has been with us."

Grace replied but after an instant, as moved by more things than she
could say--moved above all, in her trouble and her pity for him, by
other things than harshness: "Oh father, father, father----!"

He searched her through all the compassion of her cry, but appeared to
give way to her sincerity. "Well then if I _have_ your denial I take
it as answering my whole question--in a manner that satisfies me. If
there's nothing, on your