“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 spend Easter in these parts, and that he should like greatly to be allowed some day to come over and make acquaintance with our things. I told him,” Lady Grace wound up, “that nothing would be easier; a note from him arrived before dinner——”
Lady Sandgate jumped the rest “And it’s for him you’ve come in.”
“It’s for him I’ve come in,” the girl assented with serenity.
“Very good—though he sounds most detrimental! But will you first just tell me this—whether when you sent in ten minutes ago for Lord John to come out to you it was wholly of your own movement?” And she followed it up as her young friend appeared to hesitate. “Was it because you knew why he had arrived?”
The young friend hesitated still. “‘Why ‘?”
“So particularly to speak to you.”
“Since he was expected and mightn’t know where I was,” Lady Grace said after an instant, “I wanted naturally to be civil to him.”
“And had he time there to tell you,” Lady Sand-gate asked, “how very civil he wants to be to you?”