IX
Lord Theign, when he had gone, revolved—it might have been nervously—about the place a little, but soon broke ground. “He’ll have told you, I understand, that I’ve promised to speak to you for him. But I understand also that he has found something to say for himself.”
“Yes, we talked—a while since,” the girl said. “At least he did.”
“Then if you listened I hope you listened with a good grace.”
“Oh, he speaks very well—and I’ve never disliked him.”
It pulled her father up. “Is that all—when I think so much of him?”
She seemed to say that she had, to her own mind, been liberal and gone far; but she waited a little. “Do you think very, very much?”
“Surely I’ve made my good opinion clear to you!”
Again she had a pause. “Oh yes, I’ve seen you like him and believe in him—and I’ve found him pleasant and clever.”
“He has never had,” Lord Theign more or less ingeniously explained, “what I call a real show.” But the character under discussion could after all be summed up without searching analysis. “I consider nevertheless that there’s plenty in him.”