The young man read out this missive. “‘Failing to find you in Bruton Street, start in pursuit and hope to overtake you about four.’” It did involve an ambiguity. “Why, he has been engaged these three days to coincide with myself, and not to fail of him has been part of my business.”
Lady Sandgate, in her demonstrative way, appealed to the general rich scene. “Then why does he say it’s me he’s pursuing?”
He seemed to recognise promptly enough in her the sense of a menaced monopoly. “My dear lady, he’s pursuing expensive works of art.”
“By which you imply that I’m one?” She might have been wound up by her disappointment to almost any irony.
“I imply—or rather I affirm—that every handsome woman is! But what he arranged with me about,” Lord John explained, “was that he should see the Dedborough pictures in general and the great Sir Joshua in particular—of which he had heard so much and to which I’ve been thus glad to assist him.”
This news, however, with its lively interest, but deepened the listener’s mystification. “Then why—this whole week that I’ve been in the house—hasn’t our good friend here mentioned to me his coming?”
“Because our good friend here has had no reason”—Lord John could treat it now as simple enough. “Good as he is in all ways, he’s so best of all about showing the house and its contents that I haven’t even thought necessary to write him that I’m introducing Breckenridge.”
“I should have been happy to introduce him,” Lady Sandgate just quavered—“if I had at all known he wanted it.”
Her companion weighed the difference between them and appeared to pronounce it a trifle he didn’t care a fig for. “I surrender you that privilege then—of presenting him to his host—if I’ve seemed to you to snatch it from you.” To which Lord John added, as with liberality unrestricted, “But I’ve been taking him about to see what’s worth while—as only last week to Lady Lappington’s Longhi.”
This revelation, though so casual in its form, fairly drew from Lady Sandgate, as she took it in, an interrogative wail. “Her Longhi?”