him as an ally.
"Ah, you strike me as a little hard on her. Your father himself--in his
looser moments!--takes pleasure in what she says."

Our young woman's eyes, as they rested on him after this remark, had
no mercy for its extreme feebleness. "If you mean that she's the most
reckless rattle one knows, and that she never looks so beautiful as when
she's at her worst, and that, always clever for where she makes out her
interest, she has learnt to 'get round' him till he only sees through
her eyes--if you mean _that_ I understand you perfectly. But even if you
think me horrid for reflecting so on my nearest and dearest, it's not on
the side on which he has most confidence in his elder daughter that his
youngest is moved to have most confidence in _him_."

Lord John stared as if she had shaken some odd bright fluttering
object in his face; but then recovering himself: "He hasn't perhaps an
absolutely boundless confidence--"

"In any one in the world but himself?"--she had taken him straight up.
"He hasn't indeed, and that's what we must come to; so that even if he
likes you as much as you doubtless very justly feel, it won't be because
you are right about your being nice, but because _he_ is!"

"You mean that if I were wrong about it he would still insist that he
isn't?"

Lady Grace was indeed sure. "Absolutely--if he had begun so! He began so
with Kitty--that is with allowing her everything."

Lord John appeared struck. "Yes--and he still allows her two thousand."

"I'm glad to hear it--she has never told me how much!" the girl
undisguisedly smiled.

"Then perhaps I oughtn't!"--he glowed with the light of contrition.

"Well, you can't help it now," his companion remarked with amusement.

"You mean that he ought to allow _you_ as much?" Lord John inquired.
"I'm sure you're right, and that he will," he continued quite as in good
faith; "but I want you to understand that I don't care in the least what
it may be!"

The subject of his suit took the longest look at him she had taken yet.
"You're very good to say so!"

If this was ironic the touch fell short, thanks to his perception that
they had practically just ceased to be alone. They were in presence of
a third figure, who had arrived from the terrace, but whose approach to
them was not so immediate as to deprive Lord John of time for another
question. "Will you let _him_ tell you, at all events, how good he
thinks me?--and then let me come back and have it