Lord Theign glanced at him as for positively the last time, but spoke to Lady Grace. “Understand then, please, that, as I detach myself from any association with this gentleman’s ideas—whether about the Moretto or about anything else—his further application of them ceases from this moment to concern us.”
The girl’s rejoinder was to address herself directly to Hugh, across their companion. “Will you make your inquiry for me then?”
The light again kindled in him. “With all the pleasure in life!” He had found his cap and, taking them together, bowed to the two, for departure, with high emphasis of form. Then he marched off in the direction from which he had entered.
Lord Theign scarce waited for his disappearance to turn in wrath to Lady Grace. “I denounce the indecency, wretched child, of your public defiance of me!”
They were separated by a wide interval now, and though at her distance she met his reproof so unshrinkingly as perhaps to justify the terms into which it had broken, she became aware of a reason for his not following it up. She pronounced in quick warning “Lord John!”—for their friend, released from among the pictures, was rejoining them, was already there.
He spoke straight to his host on coming into sight. “Bender’s at last off, but”—he indicated the direction of the garden front—“you may still find him, out yonder, prolonging the agony with Lady Sand-gate.”
Lord Theign remained a moment, and the heat of his resentment remained. He looked with a divided discretion, the pain of his indecision, from his daughter’s suitor and his approved candidate to that contumacious young woman and back again; then choosing his course in silence he had a gesture of almost desperate indifference and passed quickly out by the door to the terrace.
It had left Lord John gaping. “What on earth’s the matter with your father?”
“What on earth indeed?” Lady Grace unaidingly asked. “Is he discussing with that awful man?”
“Old Bender? Do you think him so awful?” Lord John showed surprise—which might indeed have passed for harmless amusement; but he shook everything off in view of a nearer interest. He quite waved old Bender away. “My dear girl, what do we care—?”