“I think they show it in all sorts of ways”—and Hugh’s critical smile, at almost any moment hovering, played over the question in a manner seeming to convey that he meant many things.
“Understand then, please,” said Lord Theign with every inch of his authority, “that they’ll show it best by minding their own business while I very particularly mind mine.”
“You simply do, in other words,” Hugh explicitly concluded, “what happens to be convenient to you.”
“In very distinct preference to what happens to be convenient to you! So that I need no longer detain you,” Lord Theign added with the last dryness and as if to wind up their brief and thankless connection.
The young man took his dismissal, being able to do no less, while, unsatisfied and unhappy, he looked about mechanically for the cycling-cap he had laid down somewhere in the hall on his arrival. “I apologise, my lord, if I seem to you to have ill repaid your hospitality. But,” he went on with his uncommended cheer, “my interest in your picture remains.”
Lady Grace, who had stopped and strayed and stopped again as a mere watchful witness, drew nearer hereupon, breaking her silence for the first time. “And please let me say, father, that mine also grows and grows.”
It was obvious that this parent, surprised and disconcerted by her tone, judged her contribution superfluous. “I’m happy to hear it, Grace—but yours is another affair.”
“I think on the contrary that it’s quite the same one,” she returned—“since it’s on my hint to him that Mr. Crimble has said to you what he has.” The resolution she had gathered while she awaited her chance sat in her charming eyes, which met, as she spoke, the straighter paternal glare. “I let him know that I supposed you to think of profiting by the importance of Mr. Bender’s visit.”
“Then you might have spared, my dear, your—I suppose and hope well-meant—interpretation of my mind.” Lord Theign showed himself at this point master of the beautiful art of righting himself as without having been in the wrong. “Mr. Bender’s visit will terminate—as soon as he has released Lord John—without my having profited in the smallest particular.”
Hugh meanwhile evidently but wanted to speak for his friend. “It was Lady Grace’s anxious inference, she will doubtless let me say for her, that my idea about the Moretto would add to your power—well,” he pushed on not without awkwardness, “of ‘realising’ advantageously on such a prospective rise.”