He would not decide to be ‘precipitate,’ and the days ran their course, until Lady Grace Halley arrived at Cronidge, a widow.  Lady Cantor spoke to her of Dudley’s unfathomable gloom.  Lady Grace took him aside.

She said, without preface:  ‘You’ve heard, have you!’

‘You were aware of it?’ said he, and his tone was irritable with a rebuke.

’Coming through town, for the first time yesterday.  I had it—­of all men!—­from a Sir Abraham Quatley, to whom I was recommended to go, about my husband’s shares in a South American Railway; and we talked, and it came out.  He knows; he says, it is not generally known; and he likes, respects Mr. Victor Radnor; we are to keep the secret.  Hum?  He had heard of your pretensions; and our relationship, etc.:  “esteemed” it—­ you know the City dialect—­his duty to mention, etc.  That was after I had spied on his forehead the something I wormed out of his mouth.  What are you going to do?’

‘What can I do!’

‘Are you fond of the girl?’

An attachment was indicated, as belonging to the case.  She was not a woman to whom the breathing of pastoral passion would be suitable; yet he saw that she despised him for a lover; and still she professed to understand his dilemma.  Perplexity at the injustice of fate and persons universally, put a wrinkled mask on his features and the expression of his feelings.  They were torn, and the world was torn; and what he wanted, was delay, time for him to define his feelings and behold a recomposed picture of the world.  He had already taken six days.  He pleaded the shock to his family.

‘You won’t have such a chance again,’ she said.  Shrugs had set in.

They agreed as to the behaviour of the girl’s mother.  It reflected on the father, he thought.

‘Difficult thing to proclaim, before an engagement!’ Her shoulders were restless.

‘When a man’s feelings get entangled!’

‘Oh! a man’s feelings!  I’m your British Jury for, a woman’s.’

‘He has married her?’

She declared to not knowing particulars.  She could fib smoothly.

The next day she was on the line to London, armed with the proposal of an appointment for the Hon. Dudley to meet ‘the girl’s father.’

CHAPTER XXVII

Contains what is A small thing or A great, as the soul of the chief actor
may decide

Skepsey ushered Lady Grace into his master’s private room, and entertained her during his master’s absence.  He had buried his wife, he said:  she feared, seeing his posture of the soaping of hands at one shoulder, that he was about to bewail it; and he did wish to talk of it, to show his modest companionship with her in loss, and how a consolation for our sorrows may be obtained:  but he won her approval, by taking the acceptable course between the dues to the subject and those to his hearer, as a model cab should drive considerate equally of horse and fare.