LADY SANDGATE, on a morning late in May, entered her drawing-room by the door that opened at the right of that charming retreat as a person coming in faced Bruton Street; and she met there at this moment Mr. Gotch, her butler, who had just appeared in the much wider doorway forming opposite the Bruton Street windows an apartment not less ample, lighted from the back of the house and having its independent connection with the upper floors and the lower. She showed surprise at not immediately finding the visitor to whom she had been called.

“But Mr. Crimble——?”

“Here he is, my lady.” And he made way for that gentleman, who emerged from the back room; Gotch observing the propriety of a prompt withdrawal.

“I went in for a minute, with your servant's permission,” Hugh explained, “to see your famous Lawrence—which is splendid; he was 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 shouldn't in the least mind!—and I’m here, frankly, at this early hour, to ask your consent to my seeing Lady Grace a moment on a particular business, if she can kindly give me time.”