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 stood staring as at the size of it—then translated it into his own terms. “If I’ll obligingly announce to the world that I’ve made an ass of myself you’ll kindly forbear from your united effort—the charming pair of you—to show me up for one?”
Lady Grace, as if consciously not caring or attempting to answer this, simply gave the first flare of his criticism time to drop. It wasn’t till a minute passed that she said: “You don’t agree to my compromise?”
Ah, the question but fatally sharpened at a stroke the stiffness of his spirit. “Good God, I’m to ‘compromise’ on top of everything?—I’m to let you browbeat me, haggle and bargain with me, over a thing that I’m entitled to settle with you as things have ever been settled among us, by uttering to you my last parental word?”
“You don’t care enough then for what you name?”—she took it up as scarce heeding now what he said.
“For putting an end to your odious commerce—? I give you the measure, on the contrary,” said Lord Theign, “of how much I care: as you give me, very strangely indeed, it strikes me, that of what it costs you—!” But his other words were lost in the hard long look at her from which he broke off in turn as for disgust.
It was with an effect of decently shielding herself—the unuttered meaning came so straight—that she substituted words of her own. “Of what it costs me to redeem the picture?”
“To lose your tenth-rate friend”—he spoke without scruple now.