t made his lordship easier. "Then he's all right--on such a
day."

His companion could none the less just wonder. "Hadn't Lady Grace told
you?"

"That he was coming? Not that I remember." But Lord Theign, perceptibly
preoccupied, made nothing of this. "We've had other fish to fry, and you
know the freedom I allow her."

His friend had a vivid gesture. "My dear man, I only ask to profit by
it!" With which there might well have been in Lord John's face a light
of comment on the pretension in such a quarter to allow freedom.

Yet it was a pretension that Lord Theign sustained--as to show himself
far from all bourgeois narrowness. "She has her friends by the score--at
this time of day." There was clearly a claim here also--to _know_ the
time of day. "But in the matter of friends where, by the way, is your
own--of whom I've but just heard?"

"Oh, off there among the pictures too; so they'll have met and taken
care of each other." Accounting for this inquirer would be clearly the
least of Lord John's difficulties. "I mustn't appear to Bender to have
failed him; but I must at once let you know, before I join him, that,
seizing my opportunity, I have just very definitely, in fact very
pressingly, spoken to Lady Grace. It hasn't been perhaps," he continued,
"quite the pick of a chance; but that seemed never to come, and if
I'm not too fondly mistaken, at any rate, she listened to me without
abhorrence. Only I've led her to expect--for our case--that you'll be
so good, without loss of time, as to say the clinching word to her
yourself."

"Without loss, you mean, of--a--my daughter's time?" Lord Theign,
confessedly and amiably interested, had accepted these intimations--yet
with the very blandness that was not accessible to hustling and was
never forgetful of its standing privilege of criticism. He had come in
from his public duty, a few minutes before, somewhat flushed and blown;
but that had presently dropped--to the effect, we should have guessed,
of his appearing to Lord John at least as cool as the occasion required.
His appearance, we ourselves certainly should have felt, was in all
respects charming--with the great note of it the beautiful restless,
almost suspicious, challenge to you, on the part of deep and mixed
things in him, his pride and his shyness, his conscience, his taste and
his temper, to deny that he was admirably simple. Obviously, at this
rate, he had a passion for simplicity--simplicity, above all, of