Page:The Outcry (London, Methuen & Co., 1911).djvu/148

134 "Old Bender? Do you think him so awful?" Lord John showed surprise—which might indeed have passed for harmless amusement; but he shook everything off in view of a nearer interest. He quite waved old Bender away. "My dear girl, what do we care?"

"I care immensely, I assure you," she interrupted, "and I ask of you, please, to tell me!"

Her perversity, coming straight and which he had so little expected, threw him back so that he looked at her with sombre eyes. "Ah, it's not for such a matter I'm here, Lady Grace—I'm here with that fond question of my own." And then as she turned away, leaving him with a vehement motion of protest: "I've come for your kind answer—the answer your father instructed me to count on."

"I've no kind answer to give you!"—she raised forbidding hands. "I entreat you to leave me alone."

There was so high a spirit and so strong a force in it that he stared as if stricken by violence. "In God's name then what has happened—when you almost gave me your word?"