own he's always late, and he's
no bowman--understands nothing about it. But I told him he must come;
he would see the flower of the neighborhood here. He asked about
you--had seen Arrowpoint's card. I think you had not made his
acquaintance in town. He has been a good deal abroad. People don't know
him much."

"No; we are strangers," said Mrs. Arrowpoint. "But that is not what
might have been expected. For his uncle Sir Hugo Mallinger and I are
great friends when we meet."

"I don't know; uncles and nephews are not so likely to be seen together
as uncles and nieces," said his lordship, smiling toward the rector.
"But just come with me one instant, Gascoigne, will you? I want to
speak a word about the clout-shooting."

Gwendolen chose to go too and be deposited in the same group with her
mamma and aunt until she had to shoot again. That Mr. Grandcourt might
after all not appear on the archery-ground, had begun to enter into
Gwendolen's thought as a possible deduction from the completeness of
her pleasure. Under all her saucy satire, provoked chiefly by her
divination that her friends thought of him as a desirable match for
her, she felt something very far from indifference as to the impression
she would make on him. True, he was not to have the slightest power
over her (for Gwendolen had not considered that the desire to conquer
is itself a sort of subjection); she had made up her mind that he was
to be one of those complimentary and assiduously admiring men of whom
even her narrow experience had shown her several with various-colored
beards and various styles of bearing; and the sense that her friends
would want her to think him delightful, gave her a resistant
inclination to presuppose him ridiculous. But that was no reason why
she could spare his presence: and even a passing prevision of trouble
in case she despised and refused him, raised not the shadow of a wish
that he should save her that trouble by showing no disposition to make
her an offer. Mr. Grandcourt taking hardly any notice of her, and
becoming shortly engaged to Miss Arrowpoint, was not a picture which
flattered her imagination.

Hence Gwendolen had been all ear to Lord Brackenshaw's mode of
accounting for Grandcourt's non-appearance; and when he did arrive, no
consciousness--not even Mrs. Arrowpoint's or Mr. Gascoigne's--was more
awake to the fact than hers, although she steadily avoided looking
toward any point where he was likely to be. There sho