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."
"You've known then of her being with me?"
"I've known of her coming to you straight on leaving Dedborough," he explained; "of her wishing not to go to her sister's, and of Lord Theign's having proceeded, as they say, or being on the point of proceeding, to some foreign part."
"And you've learnt it from having seen her—these three or four weeks?"
"I've met her—but just barely—two or three times: at a 'private view,' at the opera, in the lobby, and that sort of thing. But she hasn't told you?"
Lady Sandgate neither affirmed nor denied; she only turned on him her thick lustre. "I wanted to see how much you'd tell." She waited even as for more, but this not coming she helped herself. "Once again at dinner?"
"Yes, but alas not near her!"
"Once then at a private view?—when, with the squash they usually are, you might have been very near her indeed!"
