Page:The Outcry (London, Methuen & Co., 1911).djvu/159

Rh "He hated that—yes; but you haven't really made out," she put to him, "the other effect of your hour at Dedborough?" She recognised, however, while she spoke, that his divination had failed, and she didn't trouble him to confess it. "Directly you had gone she 'turned down' Lord John. Declined, I mean, the offer of his hand in marriage."

Hugh was clearly as much mystified as anything else. "He proposed there?"

"He had spoken, that day, before—before your talk with Lord Theign, who had every confidence in her accepting him. But you came, Mr. Crimble, you went; and when her suitor reappeared, just after you had gone, for his answer"

"She wouldn't have him?" Hugh asked with a precipitation of interest.

But Lady Sandgate could humour almost any curiosity. "She wouldn't look at him."

He bethought himself. "But had she said she would?"

"So her father indignantly considers."

"That's the ground of his indignation?"

"He had his reasons for counting on her, and it has determined a painful crisis."