Page:The Outcry (London, Methuen & Co., 1911).djvu/27

Rh for the temper of these appetites or views was certainly, you would have concluded, not such as always to sacrifice to form. If he really, for instance, wanted Lady Grace, the passion or the sense of his interest in it would scarce have been considerately irritable.

"May I ask what you mean," he inquired of Lady Sandgate, "by the question of my 'arranging'?"

"I mean that you're the very clever son of a very clever mother."

"Oh, I'm less clever than you think," he replied—"if you really think it of me at all; and mamma's a good sight cleverer!"

"Than I think?" Lady Sandgate echoed. "Why, she's the person in all our world I would gladly most resemble—for her general ability to put what she wants through." But she at once added: "That is if—!" pausing on it with a smile.

"If what then?"

"Well, if I could be absolutely certain to have all her kinds of cleverness without exception—and to have them," said Lady Sandgate, "to the very end."

He definitely, he almost contemptuously