it, none the less, led her companion immediately, though
very quietly, to correct her. "I've not come back to wait for Lord
John."

"Then he hasn't told you--if you've talked--with what idea he has come?"

Lady Grace had for a further correction the same shade of detachment.
"Kitty has told me--what it suits her to pretend to suppose."

"And Kitty's pretensions and suppositions always go with what
happens--at the moment, among all her wonderful happenings--to suit
her?"

Lady Grace let that question answer itself--she took the case up further
on. "What I can't make out is why this _should_ so suit her!"

"And what _I_ can't!" said Lady Sandgate without gross honesty and
turning away after having watched the girl a moment. She nevertheless
presently faced her again to follow this speculation up. "Do you like
him enough to risk the chance of Kitty's being for once right?"

Lady Grace gave it a thought--with which she moved away. "I don't know
how much I like him!"

"Nor how little!" cried her friend, who evidently found amusement in the
tone of it. "And you're not disposed to take the time to find out? He's
at least better than the others."

"The 'others'?"--Lady Grace was blank for them.

"The others of his set."

"Oh, his set! That wouldn't be difficult--by what I imagine of some of
them. But he means well enough," the girl added; "he's very charming and
does me great honour."

It determined in her companion, about to leave her, another brief
arrest. "Then may I tell your father?"

This in turn brought about in Lady Grace an immediate drop of the
subject. "Tell my father, please, that I'm expecting Mr. Crimble; of
whom I've spoken to him even if he doesn't remember, and who bicycles
this afternoon ten miles over from where he's staying--with some people
we don't know--to look at the pictures, about which he's awfully keen."

Lady Sandgate took it in. "Ah, like Mr. Bender?"

"No, not at all, I think, like Mr. Bender."

This appeared to move in the elder woman some deeper thought "May I ask
then--if one's to meet him--who he is?"

"Oh, father knows--or ought to--that I sat next him, in London, a month
ago, at dinner, and that he then told me he was working, tooth and
nail, at what he called the wonderful modern science of
Connoisseurship--which is upsetting, as perhaps you're not aware, all
the old-fashioned canons of art-criticism, everything we've stupidly
thought right and held dear; that he was to