“Why, right near! I’ll come back.” And Mr. Bender’s flight was on the wings of optimism.
But it all gave Hugh a quick question for Lady Grace. “Why does the Prince come, and what in the world’s happening?”
“My father has suddenly returned—it may have to do with that.”
The shadow of his surprise darkened visibly to that of his fear. “Mayn’t it be more than anything else to give you and me his final curse?”
“I don’t know—and I think I don’t care. I don’t care,” she said, “so long as you’re right and as the greatest light of all declares you are.”
“He is the greatest”—Hugh was vividly of that opinion now: “I could see it as soon as I got there with him, the charming creature! There, before the holy thing, and with the place, by good luck, for those great moments, practically to ourselves—without Macintosh to take in what was happening or any one else at all to speak of—it was but a matter of ten minutes: he had come, he had seen, and I had conquered.”
“Naturally you had!”—the girl hung on him for it; “and what was happening beyond everything else was that for your original dear divination, one of the divinations of genius—with every creature all these ages so stupid—you were being baptized on the spot a great man.”
“Well, he did let poor Pappendick have it at least-he doesn’t think he’s one: that that eminent judge couldn’t, even with such a leg up, rise to my level or seize my point. And if you really want to know,” Hugh went on in his gladness, “what for us has most particularly and preciously taken place, it is that in his opinion, for my career—”
“Your reputation,” she cried, “blazes out and your fortune’s made?”
He did a happy violence to his modesty. “Well, Bardi adores intelligence and takes off his hat to me.”