Page:The Better Sort (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1903).djvu/66

THE BETTER SORT "Well," said the young man, only wishing, in his candour, it was clear, to be drawn out—"well, she has, in the manner of her mother's people, about thirteen; but that's the one we generally use."

Mrs. Grantham hesitated but an instant. "Then may I generally use it?"

"It would be too charming of you; and nothing would give her—as, I assure you, nothing would give me, greater pleasure." Lord Gwyther quite glowed with the thought.

"Then I think that instead of coming alone you might have brought her to see me."

"It's exactly what," he instantly replied, "I came to ask your leave to do." He explained that for the moment Lady Gwyther was not in town, having as soon as she arrived gone down to Torquay to put in a few days with one of her aunts, also her godmother, to whom she was an object of great interest. She had seen no one yet, and no one—not that that mattered—had seen her; she knew nothing whatever of London and was awfully frightened at facing it and at what however little might be expected of her. "She wants some one," he said, "some one who knows the whole thing, don't you see? and who's thoroughly kind and clever, as you would be, if I may say so, to take her by the hand." It was at this point and on these words that the eyes of Lord Gwyther's two auditors inevitably and wonderfully met. But there was nothing in the way he kept it up to show that he caught the encounter. "She wants, if I may tell you so, for the great labyrinth, a real friend; and asking myself what I could do to make things ready for her, and who would be absolutely the best woman in London"

"You thought, naturally, of me?" Mrs. Grantham had listened with no sign but the faint flash just noted; now, however, she gave him the full light of her 54