Page:The Outcry (London, Methuen & Co., 1911).djvu/154

140 so good as to arrange the light." The young man's dress was of a form less relaxed than on the occasion of his visit to Dedborough; yet the soft felt hat that he rather restlessly crumpled as he talked marked the limit of his sacrifice to vain appearances.

Lady Sandgate was at once interested in the punctuality of his reported act. "Gotch thinks as much of my ancestress as I do—and even seems to have ended by taking her for his very own."

"One sees, unmistakably, from her beauty, that you at any rate are of her line," Hugh allowed himself, not without confidence, the amusement of replying; "and I must make sure of another look at her when I've a good deal more time."

His hostess heard him as with a lapse of hope. "You hadn't then come for the poor dear?" And then as he obviously hadn't, but for something quite else: "I thought, from so prompt an interest, that she might be coveted—!" It dropped with a yearning sigh.

"You imagined me sent by some prowling collector?" Hugh asked. "Ah, I shall never do their work—unless to betray them: that I