with your
insufferable 'we,' as if you were presenting him as your--God knows
what! You've enjoyed a large exchange of ideas, I gather, to have
arrived at such unanimity." And then, as if to fall into no trap he
might somehow be laying for her, she dropped all eagerness and rebutted
nothing: "You must see a great deal of your fellow-critic not to be able
to speak of yourself without him!"

"Yes, we're fellow-critics, father"--she accepted this opening. "I
perfectly adopt your term." But it took her a minute to go further. "I
saw Mr. Crim-ble here half an hour ago."

"Saw him 'here'?" Lord Theign amazedly asked. "He _comes_ to you
here--and Amy Sandgate has been silent?"

"It wasn't her business to tell you--since, you see, she could leave it
to me. And I quite expect," Lady Grace then produced, "that he'll come
again."

It brought down with a bang all her father's authority. "Then I simply
exact of you that you don't see him."

The pause of which she paid it the deference was charged like a brimming
cup. "Is that what you _really_ meant by your condition just now--that
when I do see him I shall not speak to him?"

"What I 'really meant' is what I really mean--that you bow to the law I
lay upon you and drop the man altogether."

"Have nothing to do with him at all?"

"Have nothing to do with him at all."

"In fact"--she took it in--"give him wholly up."

He had an impatient gesture. "You sound as if I asked you to give up
a fortune!" And then, though she had phrased his idea without
consternation--verily as if it had been in the balance for her--he
might have been moved by something that gathered in her eyes. "You're
so wrapped up in him that the precious sacrifice is like _that_ sort of
thing?"

Lady Grace took her time--but showed, as her eyes continued to hold him,
what _had_ gathered. "I like Mr. Crimble exceedingly, father--I think
him clever, intelligent, good; I want what he wants--I want it, I think,
really, as much; and I don't at all deny that he has helped to make me
so want it. But that doesn't matter. I'll wholly cease to see him, I'll
give him up forever, if--if--!" She faltered, however, she hung fire
with a smile that anxiously, intensely appealed. Then she began
and stopped again, "If--if--!" while her father caught her up with
irritation.

"'If,' my lady? If _what_, please?"

"If you'll withdraw the offer of our picture to Mr. Bender--and never
make another to any one else!"

He sto