and the old faiths
themselves that he left her to struggle with. All this made for depth
and beauty in her serious young face--as it had indeed a force that,
not indistinguishably, after an instant, his lordship lost any wish for
longer exposure to. His shift of his attitude before she went out was
fairly an evasion; if the extent of the levity of one of his daughter's
made him afraid, what might have been his present strange sense but a
fear of the other from the extent of her gravity? Lady Grace passes from
us at any rate in her laced and pearled and plumed slimness and her pale
concentration--leaving her friend a moment, however, with his hand on
the door.

"You thanked me just now for Bardi's opinion after all," Hugh said with
a smile; "and it seems to me that--after all as well--I've grounds for
thanking you!" On which he left his benefactor alone.

"Tit for tat!" There broke from Lord Theign, in his solitude, with the
young man out of earshot, that vague ironic comment; which only served
his turn, none the less, till, bethinking himself, he had gone back to
the piece of furniture used for his late scribble and come away from it
again the next minute delicately holding a fair slip that we naturally
recognise as Mr. Bender's forgotten cheque. This apparently surprising
value he now studied at his ease and to the point of its even drawing
from him an articulate "What in damnation--?" His speculation dropped
before the return of his hostess, whose approach through the other room
fell upon his ear and whom he awaited after a quick thrust of the cheque
into his waistcoat.

Lady Sandgate appeared now in due--that is in the most happily
adjusted--splendour; she had changed her dress for something smarter
and more appropriate to the entertainment of Princes, "Tea will be
downstairs," she said. "But you're alone?"

"I've just parted," her friend replied, "with Grace and Mr. Crimble."

"'Parted' with them?"--the ambiguity struck her.

"Well, they've gone out together to flaunt their monstrous connection!"

"You speak," she laughed, "as if it were too gross--I They're surely
coming back?"

"Back to you, if you like--but not to me."

"Ah, what are you and I," she tenderly argued, "but one and the same
quantity? And though you may not as yet absolutely rejoice in--well,
whatever they're doing," she cheerfully added, "you'll get beautifully
used to it."

"That's just what I'm afraid of--what such horrid matters make