od; but in any more worldly element than that--as you've ever seen
for yourself--a poor strand with my own sad affairs, a broken reed; not
'great' as they used so finely to call it! You _are_--with the natural
sense of greatness and, for supreme support, the instinctive grand man
doing and taking things."

He sighed, none the less, he groaned, with his thoughts of trouble, for
the strain he foresaw on these resolutions. "If you mean that I hold
up my head, on higher grounds, I grant that I always have. But how much
longer possible when my children commit such vulgarities? Why in the
name of goodness are such children? What the devil has got into them,
and is it really the case that when Grace offers as a proof of her
license and a specimen of her taste a son-in-law as you tell me I'm in
danger of helplessly to swallow the dose?"

"Do you find Mr. Crimble," Lady Sandgate as if there might really be
something to say, "so utterly out of the question?"

"I found him on the two occasions before I went away in the last degree
offensive and outrageous; but even if he charged one and one's poor dear
decent old defences with less rabid a fury everything about him would
forbid _that_ kind of relation."

What kind of relation, if any, Hugh's deficiencies might still render
thinkable Lord Theign was kept from going on to mention by the voice of
Mr. Gotch, who had thrown open the door to the not altogether assured
sound of "Mr. Breckenridge Bender." The guest in possession gave a cry
of impatience, but Lady Sandgate said "Coming up?"

"If his lordship will see him."

"Oh, he's beyond his time," his lordship pronounced--"I can't see him
now!"

"Ah, but _mustn't_ you--and mayn't _I_ then?" She waited, however, for
no response to signify to her servant "Let him come," and her companion
could but exhale a groan of reluctant accommodation as if he wondered
at the point she made of it. It enlightened him indeed perhaps a little
that she went on while Gotch did her bidding. "Does the kind of relation
you'd be condemned to with Mr. Crimble let you down, down, down, as you
say, more than the relation you've been having with Mr. Bender?"

Lord Theign had for it the most uninforming of stares. "Do you mean
don't I hate 'em equally both?"

She cut his further reply short, however, by a "Hush!" of warning--Mr.
Bender was there and his introducer had left them.

Lord Theign, full of his purpose of departure, sacrificed hereupon
little