rything!"--she took the
question from his mouth. "I believe in such a cause exactly as you
do--and found a lesson, at Dedborough, in your frankness and your
faith."

"Then you'll help me no end," he said all simply and sincerely.

"You've helped _me_ already"--that she gave him straight back. And on it
they stayed a moment, their strenuous faces more intensely communing.

"You're very wonderful--for a girl!" Hugh brought out.

"One _has_ to be a girl, naturally, to be a daughter of one's house,"
she laughed; "and that's all I am of ours--but a true and a right and a
straight one."

He glowed with his admiration. "You're splendid!"

That might be or not, her light shrug intimated; she gave it, at any
rate, the go-by and more exactly stated her case. "I see our situation."

"So do I, Lady Grace!" he cried with the strongest emphasis. "And your
father only doesn't."

"Yes," she said for intelligent correction--"he sees it, there's nothing
in life he sees so much. But unfortunately he sees it all wrong."

Hugh seized her point of view as if there had been nothing of her that
he wouldn't have seized. "He sees it all wrong then! My appeal the other
day he took as a rude protest. And any protest----"

"Any protest," she quickly and fully agreed, "he takes as an offence,
yes. It's his theory that he still has rights," she smiled, "though he
_is_ a miserable peer."

"How should he not have rights," said Hugh, "when he has really
everything on earth?"

"Ah, he doesn't even _know_ that--he takes it so much for granted." And
she sought, though as rather sadly and despairingly, to explain. "He
lives all in his own world."

"He lives all in his own, yes; but he does business all in ours--quite
as much as the people who come up to the city in the Tube." With which
Hugh had a still sharper recall of the stiff actual. "And he must be
here to do business to-day."

"You know," Lady Grace asked, "that he's to meet Mr. Bender?"

"Lady Sandgate kindly warned me, and," her companion saw as he glanced
at the clock on the chimney, "I've only ten minutes, at best. The
'Journal' won't have been good for him," he added--"you doubtless have
seen the 'Journal'?"

"No"--she was vague. "We live by the 'Morning Post.'"

"That's why our friend here didn't speak then," Hugh said with a better
light--"which, out of a dim consideration for her, I didn't do, either.
But they've a leader this morning about Lady Lappington and her Longhi,