“The large red morocco case.”
Lady Sandgate fairly jumped at it. “Your blessed cheque-book. Lay it on my desk,” she said to Gotch, though waiting till he had departed again before she resumed to her visitor: “Mightn’t we conclude before he comes?”
“The Prince?” Mr. Bender’s imagination had strayed from the ground to which she sought to lead it back, and it but vaguely retraced its steps. “Will he want your great-grandmother?”
“Well, he may when he sees her!” Lady Sandgate laughed. “And Theign, when he comes, will give you on his own question, I feel sure, every information. Shall I fish it out for you?” she encouragingly asked, beside him by her secretary-desk, at which he had arrived under her persuasive guidance and where she sought solidly to establish him, opening out the gilded crimson case for his employ, so that he had but to help himself. “What enormous cheques! You can never draw one for two-pound-ten!”
“That’s exactly what you deserve I should do!” He remained after this solemnly still, however, like some high-priest circled with ceremonies; in consonance with which, the next moment, both her hands held out to him the open and immaculate page of the oblong series much as they might have presented a royal infant at the christening-font.
He failed, in his preoccupation, to receive it; so she placed it before him on the table, coming away with a brave gay “Well, I leave it to you!” She had not, restlessly revolving, kept her discreet distance for many minutes before she found herself almost face to face with the recurrent Gotch, upright at the door with a fresh announcement.
“Mr. Crimble, please—for Lady Grace.”
“Mr. Crimble again?”—she took it discomposedly.
It reached Mr. Bender at the secretary, but to a different effect. “Mr. Crimble? Why he’s just the man I want to see!”
Gotch, turning to the lobby, had only to make way for him. “Here he is, my lady.”