"Then I must now write him"--and his lordship, while he spoke and from
where he stood, looked in refined disconnectedness out of the window.

"Will you write _there?_"--and his daughter indicated Lady Sandgate's
desk, at which we have seen Mr. Bender so importantly seated.

Lord Theign had a start at her again speaking to him; but he bent his
view on the convenience awaiting him and then, as to have done with so
tiresome a matter, took advantage of it. He went and placed himself, and
had reached for paper and a pen when, struck apparently with the display
of some incongruous object, he uttered a sharp "Hallo!"

"You don't find things?" Lady Grace asked--as remote from him in one
quarter of the room as Hugh was in another.

"On the contrary!" he oddly replied. But plainly suppressing any
further surprise he committed a few words to paper and put them into an
envelope, which he addressed and brought away.

"If you like," said Hugh urbanely, "I'll carry him that myself."

"But how do you know what it consists of?"

"I don't know. But I risk it."

His lordship weighed the proposition in a high impersonal manner--he
even nervously weighed his letter, shaking it with one hand upon the
finger-tips of the other; after which, as finally to acquit himself
of any measurable obligation, he allowed Hugh, by a surrender of the
interesting object, to redeem his offer of service. "Then you'll learn,"
he simply said.

"And may _I_ learn?" asked Lady Grace.

"You?" The tone made so light of her that it was barely interrogative.

"May I go _with_ him?"

Her father looked at the question as at some cup of supreme
bitterness--a nasty and now quite regular dose with which his lips were
familiar, but before which their first movement was always tightly to
close. "_With_ me, my lord," said Hugh at last, thoroughly determined
they should open and intensifying the emphasis.

He had his effect, and Lord Theign's answer, addressed to Lady Grace,
made indifference very comprehensive. "You may do what ever you
dreadfully like!"

At this then the girl, with an air that seemed to present her choice as
absolutely taken, reached the door which Hugh had come across to open
for her.

Here she paused as for another, a last look at her father, and her
expression seemed to say to him unaidedly that, much as she would have
preferred to proceed to her act without this gross disorder, she could
yet find inspiration too in the very difficulty