measured out consideration as if it had been a yard of pretty
ribbon. "Are you sure you _know_ me enough?"

"I think I know a perfect woman when I see one!" Nothing now at least
could have been more prompt, and while a decent pity for such a mistake
showed in her smile he followed it up. "Isn't what you rather mean that
you haven't cared sufficiently to know _me?_ If so, that can be little
by little mended, Lady Grace." He was in fact altogether gallant about
it. "I'm aware of the limits of what I have to show or to offer, but I
defy you to find a limit to my possible devotion."

She deferred to that, but taking it in a lower key. "I believe you'd be
very good to me."

"Well, isn't _that_ something to start with?"--he fairly pounced on it.
"I'll do any blest thing in life you like, I'll accept any condition you
impose, if you'll only tell me you see your way."

"Shouldn't I have a little more first to see yours?" she asked. "When
you say you'll do anything in life I like, isn't there anything you
yourself want strongly enough to do?"

He cast a stare about on the suggestions of the scene. "Anything that
will make money, you mean?"

"Make money or make reputation--or even just make the time pass."

"Oh, what I have to look to in the way of a career?" If that was her
meaning he could show after an instant that he didn't fear it. "Well,
your father, dear delightful man, has been so good as to give me to
understand that he backs me for a decent deserving creature; and I've
noticed, as you doubtless yourself have, that when Lord Theign backs a
fellow----!"

He left the obvious moral for her to take up--which she did, but all
interrogatively. "The fellow at once comes in for something awfully
good?"

"I don't in the least mind your laughing at me," Lord John returned,
"for when I put him the question of the lift he'd give me by speaking
to you first he bade me simply remember the complete personal liberty in
which he leaves you, and yet which doesn't come--take my word!" said the
young man sagely--"from his being at all indifferent."

"No," she answered--"father isn't indifferent. But father's 'great'"

"Great indeed!"--her friend took it as with full comprehension. This
appeared not to prevent, however, a second and more anxious thought.
"Too great for _you?_"

"Well, he makes me feel--even as his daughter--my extreme comparative
smallness."

It was easy, Lord John indicated, to see what she meant "He's a _gr