Page:The Outcry (London, Methuen & Co., 1911).djvu/143

Rh "And you regard your entreaty as helped," Lord Theign asked, "by the beautiful threat you are so good as to attach to it?" Then as his monitor, arrested, exchanged a searching look with Lady Grace, who, showing in her face all the pain of the business, stood off at the distance to which a woman instinctively retreats when a scene turns to violence as precipitately as this one appeared to strike her as having turned: "I ask you that not less than I should like to know whom you speak of as 'deprived' of property that happens—for reasons that I don't suppose you also quarrel with!—to be mine."

"Well, I know nothing about threats, Lord Theign," Hugh said, "but I speak of all of us—of all the people of England; who would deeply deplore such an act of alienation, and whom, for the interest they bear you, I beseech you mercifully to consider."

"The interest they bear me?"—the master of Dedborough fairly bristled with wonder. "Pray how the devil do they show it?"

"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