“Of yours and mine and Lady Imber’s, yes—and a good bit, last not least, in that of my watching and waiting mother’s.” This struck no prompt spark of apprehension from his listener, so that Lord John went on: “The last thing she did this morning was to remind me, with her fine old frankness, that she would like to learn without more delay where, on the whole question, she is, don’t you know? What she put to me”—the younger man felt his ground a little, but proceeded further—“what she put to me, with her rather grand way of looking all questions straight in the face, you see, was: Do we or don’t we, decidedly, take up practically her very handsome offer—‘very handsome’ being, I mean, what she calls it; though it strikes even me too, you know, as rather decent.”
Lord Theign at this point resigned himself to know. “Kitty has of course rubbed into me how decent she herself finds it. She hurls herself again on me—successfully!—for everything, and it suits her down to the ground. She pays her beastly debt—that is, I mean to say,” and he took himself up, though it was scarce more than perfunctory, “discharges her obligations—by her sister’s fair hand; not to mention a few other trifles for which I naturally provide.”
Lord John, a little unexpectedly to himself on the defensive, was yet but briefly at a loss. “Of course we take into account, don’t we? not only the fact of my mother’s desire (intended, I assure you, to be most flattering) that Lady Grace shall enter our family with all honours, but her expressed readiness to facilitate the thing by an understanding over and above——”
“Over and above Kitty’s release from her damnable payment?”—Lord Theign reached out to what his guest had left rather in the air. “Of course we take everything into account—or I shouldn’t, my dear fellow, be discussing with you at all a business one or two of whose aspects so little appeal to me: especially as there’s nothing, you easily conceive, that a daughter of mine can come in for by entering even your family, or any other (as a family) that she wouldn’t be quite as sure of by just staying in her own. The Duchess’s idea, at any rate, if I’ve followed you, is that if Grace does accept you she settles on you twelve thousand; with the condition—”
Lord John was already all there. “Definitely, yes, of your settling the equivalent on Lady Grace.”
“And what do you call the equivalent of twelve thousand?”
“Why, tacked on to a value so great and so charming as Lady Grace herself, I dare say such a sum as nine or ten would serve.”
“And where the mischief, if you please, at this highly inconvenient time, am I to pick up nine or ten thousand?”
Lord John declined, with a smiling, a fairly irritating eye for his friend’s general resources, to consider that question seriously. “Surely you can have no difficulty whatever—!”
“Why not?—when you can see for yourself that I’ve had this year to let poor dear old Hill Street! Do you call it the moment for me to have liked to see myself all but cajoled into planking down even such a matter as the very much lower figure of Kitty’s horrid incubus?”