“It wouldn’t make we,” he quite rang out, “if I didn’t want to! But as it happens,” he allowed, “there’s a question it would be convenient to me to put to you. You must be, with your charming unconventional relation with him, extremely in Theign’s confidence.”
She waited a little as for more. “Is that your question—whether I am?”
“No, but if you are you’ll the better answer it”
She had no objection then to answering it beautifully. “We’re the best friends in the world; he has been really my providence, as a lone woman with almost nobody and nothing of her own, and I feel my footing here, as so frequent and yet so discreet a visitor, simply perfect But I’m happy to say that—for my pleasure when I’m really curious—this doesn’t close to me the sweet resource of occasionally guessing things.”
“Then I hope you’ve ground for believing that if I go the right way about it he’s likely to listen to me.”
Lady Sandgate measured her ground—which scarce seemed extensive. “The person he most listens to just now—and in fact at any time, as you must have seen for yourself—is that arch-tormentor, or at least beautiful wheedler, his elder daughter.”
“Lady Imber’s here?” Lord John alertly asked.
“She arrived last night and—as we’ve other visitors—seems to have set up a side-show in the garden.”
“Then she’ll ‘draw’ of course immensely, as she always does. But her sister won’t be in that case with her,” the young man supposed.
“Because Grace feels herself naturally an independent show? So she well may,” said Lady Sandgate, “but I must tell you that when I last noticed them there Kitty was in the very act of leading her away.”