ette--all with an air
of concern that had settled on him more heavily from the moment of his
finding himself alone. His luxury of gloom--if gloom it was--dropped,
however, on his taking heed of Lady Grace, who, arriving on the scene
through the other room, had had just time to stand and watch him in
silence.

"Oh!" he jerked out at sight of her--which she had to content herself
with as a parental greeting after separation, his next words doing
little to qualify its dryness. "I take it for granted that you know
I'm within a couple of hours of leaving England under a necessity of
health." And then as drawing nearer, she signified without speaking her
possession of this fact: "I've thought accordingly that before I go I
should--on this first possible occasion since that odious occurrence at
Dedborough--like to leave you a little more food for meditation, in my
absence, on the painfully false position in which you there placed me."
He carried himself restlessly even perhaps with a shade of awkwardness,
to which her stillness was a contrast; she just waited, wholly
passive--possibly indeed a trifle portentous. "If you had plotted and
planned it in advance," he none the less firmly pursued, "if you had
acted from some uncanny or malignant motive, you couldn't have arranged
more perfectly to incommode, to disconcert and, to all intents and
purposes, make light of me and insult me." Even before this charge
she made no sign; with her eyes now attached to the ground she let him
proceed. "I had practically guaranteed to our excellent, our charming
friend, your favourable view of his appeal--which you yourself too,
remember, had left him in so little doubt of!--so that, having by your
performance so egregiously failed him, I have the pleasure of their
coming down on me for explanations, for compensations, and for God knows
what besides."

Lady Grace, looking up at last, left him in no doubt of the rigour of
her attention. "I'm sorry indeed, father, to have done you any wrong;
but may I ask whom, in such a connection, you refer to as 'they'?"

"'They'?" he echoed in the manner of a man who has had handed back to
his more careful eye, across the counter, some questionable coin that he
has tried to pass. "Why, your own sister to begin with--whose interest
in what may make for your happiness I suppose you decently recognise;
and _his_ people, one and all, the delightful old Duchess in particular,
who only wanted to be charming to yo