working up our friend's confidence in your listening to
him--if you _are_ to listen?"

"I haven't in the least engaged to listen," said Lady Grace--"it will
depend on the music he makes!" But she added with light cynicism:
"Perhaps she's to gain a commission!"

"On his fairly getting you?" And then as the girl assented by silence:
"Is he in a position to pay her one?" Lady Sandgate asked.

"I dare say the Duchess is!"

"But do you see the Duchess _producing_ money--with all that Kitty, as
we're not ignorant, owes her? Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds!"--Lady
Sandgate piled them up.

Her young friend's gesture checked it. "Ah, don't tell me how many--it's
too sad and too ugly and too wrong!" To which, however, Lady Grace
added: "But perhaps that will be just her way!" And then as her
companion seemed for the moment not quite to follow: "By letting Kitty
off her debt."

"You mean that Kitty goes free if Lord John wins your promise?"

"Kitty goes free."

"She has her creditor's release?"

"For every shilling."

"And if he only fails?"

"Why then of course," said now quite lucid Lady Grace, "she throws
herself more than ever on poor father."

"Poor father indeed!"--Lady Sandgate richly sighed it

It appeared even to create in the younger woman a sense of excess.
"Yes--but he after all and in spite of everything adores her."

"To the point, you mean"--for Lady Sandgate could clearly but
wonder--"of really sacrificing you?"

The weight of Lady Grace's charming deep eyes on her face made her
pause while, at some length, she gave back this look and the interchange
determined in the girl a grave appeal. "You think I _should_ be
sacrificed if I married him?"

Lady Sandgate replied, though with an equal emphasis, indirectly.
"_Could_ you marry him?"

Lady Grace waited a moment "Do you mean for Kitty?"

"For himself even--if they should convince you, among them, that he
cares for you."

Lady Grace had another delay. "Well, he's his awful mother's son."

"Yes--but you wouldn't marry his mother."

"No--but I should only be the more uncomfortably and intimately
conscious of her."

"Even when," Lady Sandgate optimistically put it, "she so markedly likes
you?"

This determined in the girl a fine impatience. "She doesn't 'like' me,
she only _wants_ me--which is a very different thing; wants me for
my father's so particularly beautiful position, and my mother's so
supremely great people, and for everythin