There ensued upon his words and movement a vivid mute passage, the richest of commentaries, between his companions; who, deeply divided by the width of the ample room, followed him with their eyes and then used for their own interchange these organs of remark, eloquent now over Hugh’s unmistakable dismissal at short order, on which obviously he must at once act. Lady Grace’s young arms conveyed to him by a despairing contrite motion of surrender that she had done for him all she could do in his presence and that, however sharply doubtful the result, he was to leave the rest to herself. They communicated thus, the strenuous pair, for their full moment, without speaking; only with the prolonged, the charged give and take of their gaze and, it might well have been imagined, of their passion. Hugh had for an instant a show of hesitation—of the arrested impulse, while he kept her father within range, to launch at that personage before going some final remonstrance. It was the girl’s raised hand and gesture of warning that waved away for him such a mistake; he decided, under her pressure, and after a last searching and answering look at her reached the door and let himself out. The stillness was then prolonged a minute by the further wait of the two others, Lord Theign where he had been standing and his daughter on the spot from which she had not moved. It presently ended in his lordship’s turn about as if inferring by the silence that the intruder had withdrawn.
“Is that young man your lover?” he said as he drew again near.
Lady Grace waited a little, but spoke as quietly as if she had been prepared. “Has the question a bearing on the promise you a short time ago demanded of me?”
“It has a bearing on the so extraordinary appearance of your intimacy with him!”
“You mean that if he should be—what you ask me about—your exaction would then be modified?”
“My request that you break it short off? That request would, on the contrary,” Lord Theign pronounced, “rest on an immense new ground. Therefore I insist on your telling me the truth.”
“Won’t the truth be before you, father, if you’ll think a moment—without extravagance?” After which, while, as stiffly as ever—and it probably seemed to her impatience as stupidly—he didn’t rise to it, she went on: “If I offered you not again to see him, does that make for you the appearance—?”
“If you offered it, you mean, on your condition—my promising not to sell? I promised,” said Lord Theign, “absolutely nothing at all!”
She took him up with all expression. “So I promised as little! But that I should have been able to say what I did sufficiently meets your curiosity.”
She might, wronged as she held herself, have felt him stupid not to see how wronged; but he was in any case acute for an evasion. “You risked your offer for the great equivalent over which you’ve so wildly worked yourself up.”