Page:The Outcry (London, Methuen & Co., 1911).djvu/288

274 support, the instinctive grand manner of doing and taking things."

He sighed, none the less, he groaned, with his frown of trouble, for the strain he foresaw on these resources. "If you mean that I hold up my head, on proper grounds, I grant that I always have. But how's that longer possible when my children commit such base vulgarities? Why in the name of goodness have I such children? What the devil has got into 'em?—and is it really the case that when Grace offers me for a proof of her license and a specimen of her taste such a son-in-law as you tell me I'm in danger of I've just helplessly to swallow the dose?"

"Do you find Mr. Crimble," Lady Sandgate asked as if there might really be something to say for him, "so utterly out of the question?"

"I found him on the two occasions before I went away in the last degree offensive and outrageous; but even if he charged one and one's poor dear decent old defences with less rabid a fury everything about him would forbid that kind of relation."

What kind of relation, if any, Hugh's