“Ah,” he said expressively, “that might be, and still——!”
“Well,” she had a flare of fond confidence. “I’ll find out what he’ll offer—if you’ll on your side do what you can—and then ask them a third less.” And she followed it up—as if suddenly conceiving him a prig. “See here, Mr. Crimble, I’ve been—and this very first time I—charming to you.”
“You have indeed,” he returned; “but you throw back on it a lurid light if it has all been for that!”
“It has been—well, to keep things as I want them; and if I’ve given you precious information mightn’t you on your side—”
“Estimate its value in cash?”—Hugh sharply took her up. “Ah, Lady Sandgate, I am in your debt, but if you really bargain for your precious information I’d rather we assume that I haven’t enjoyed it.”
She made him, however, in reply, a sign for silence; she had heard Lady Grace enter the other room from the back landing, and, reaching the nearer door, she disposed of the question with high gay bravery. “I won’t bargain with the Treasury!”—she had passed out by the time Lady Grace arrived.
II
As Hugh recognised in this friend’s entrance and face the light of welcome he went, full of his subject, straight to their main affair. “I haven’t been able to wait, I’ve wanted so much to tell you—I mean how I’ve just come back from Brussels, where I saw Pappen-dick, who was free and ready, by the happiest chance, to start for Verona, which he must have reached some time yesterday.”
The girl’s responsive interest fairly broke into rapture. “Ah, the dear sweet thing!”